Nonfiction Book Club Colaborative Response

After discussing how best to respond to Art Spiegelman's Maus (part 1) our group decided to write a multi voice poem. It gave us a chance to explore the three competing viewpoints of the book. Art, struggling to comes to terms with who his father is and how he survived in Nazi Poland, those who died during this time, and Art's father Vladek, who survived among the worst possible circumstances. His methods for survival were tough for Art, because he acting almost solely out of the interest of the survival of his family and himself. He often had to ignore the needs of friends and distant family. And many others who survived for a long time had to do the same. But if Vladek had not survived, Art would not be alive. What does it mean to survive? What does it mean to endure? These are the topics we tried to explore in our response.
Until I can get the document in the form of an image so that the multivoice form is preserved, I am going to just publish my part.

Arty

Survival.

Maybe some aren't meant to survive, and yet Anja did.

It takes a special person to continue no matter what.

For some, it's not easy to forget.
My mother couldn't handle the pain of Hitler's Germany.

Or maybe it was her lost child
Or her disappointing son.

Maybe it was the guilt of being spared,
But only part of her survived.

She also took a piece of Vladek and me with her.

How do we survive?
Keep the memories alive?

Vladek, my father, the old miser.

Everything about him that annoys me,
Helped him survive.

And now I must help his story survive.
For a price, of course.
Always, help has its price.