The Holocaust through the eyes of Maus: how Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel changed a Hong Kong vegetarian chef’s life
- Peggy Chan, the restaurateur behind Grassroots Pantry, says the father-and-son story taught her how to channel suffering into something positive
American cartoonist Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus (serialised from 1980 to 1991; published in two volumes – 1986 and 1991) features a fictionalised version of the author interviewing his father about his experiences as a Holocaust survivor. A dazzling mix of genres, including postmodern metafiction, it depicts characters as animals, with Jews portrayed as mice, a daring use of comic form for such a serious subject. Hong Kong-born Peggy Chan, the 34-year-old chef and owner of vegetarian fine-dining restaurant Grassroots Pantry, in Sheung Wan, explains how it changed her life.
I discovered Maus on my brother’s bookshelf. I was 15 or 16 – he’s two years older than me. I guess he ordered it from one of those pamphlets you used to get from bookshops. When I was young, I was always alone. I was introverted – borderline autistic – and spent a lot of time drawing, reading and writing.
At school (in Hong Kong) we were learning about the second world war and Holocaust, and I was intrigued and wanted to find out more. The Holocaust shook me in a way I didn’t understand. I never knew something so tragic could have happened. It made me question humanity.
I picked up Maus because it has a huge Nazi symbol on the front. Reading about it from a comic rather than a textbook meant that it seeped into my brain faster. Told as a story, I could connect with it better.
There was a lot going on in my life at the time – my parents split up, my grandfather died and I stopped eating red meat. I went vegetarian within the next three or four years. I realised that there was a lot of suffering in the world and thought about what I could do to help stop it. Transferring negativity into compassion for others was a way for me to navigate through life.