Straightwashing History: Texas Fires Teacher Over Diary of Anne Frank
I confess that I did not know that Anne Frank wrote about feelings of same-sex attraction in her diary.
Of course, why would I know she wrote about that? I grew up in Utah, and I don’t recall ever having been assigned this book in the first place. I only recall being given excerpts and, of course, I saw film versions. It is hard as an adult to catch up on everything and read every page of every great book. I confess, with a great deal of shame since I am such a bibliophile, that I never caught up with the Definitive Edition of Diary of a Young Girl.
So, perhaps you knew Anne was, apparently, bisexual.
I did not know that. I did not know that Anne Frank wrote:
I had to hold back tears reading such beautiful words.
I only learned about any of this because of the news of an 8th-grade teacher in Texas being fired for assigning this to her class.
Thank you, Texas. If you did not have such a collection of childishly prudish and unapologetic homophobes running your schools, I would not have researched why you fired a teacher for teaching Anne Frank. Now I know why.
As a matter of fact, I’m heading to my bookstore to buy the precise edition in question, Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation by Ari Folman and David Polonsky. I only had to see this image from the book to know this was an above-average adaptation.
0 Comments