Stitches

In his graphic memoir, Stitches (2009), American writer and illustrator David Small, best known as an author of children’s books, reflects on his meandering journey to his current career, beginning with a difficult childhood and cancer diagnosis, through a Guggenheim Fellowship and National Book Award. Looking back on his life, Small makes a case for the motivating function of trauma, arguing that it can serve to nurture the emotional resilience and personal depth useful in making art.

Small’s memoir begins at the age of six, in the early 1950s. Often spending his days on the floor of his Detroit living room doodling, he now realizes that doodling originated in response to a reticent mother and father. Small recalls feigning illness to obtain attention from his parents: his father, a radiologist, would try to diagnose him, forming a lopsided, transactional social bond. Further, Small’s grandmother was mentally ill and abusive toward him; the trauma she inflicted on him went unobserved.

Small suffered from asthma-like sinus problems, which his father decided to treat with his favorite method: bombarding him with X-rays. At that time in medical history, the dangers of using X-rays had not yet been established, leading to its overprescription. Small attended several radiation sessions at his father’s hospital. When he turned eleven, Mrs. Dillon, a neighbor attending a family event, noticed a strange lump on his neck. She urged Small’s mother to get him to a medical professional. Small recalls his mother acting selfishly towards him, embittered that her party should be disrupted by a medical concern she viewed as trivial and exaggerated.



Small’s parents ignored the growing tumor on Small’s neck until he turned fourteen and it was diagnosed as malignant cancer. Still, his parents kept the diagnosis a secret from him, arranging for a surgery to remove the “lump.” In this semi-botched surgery, the surgeons were forced to remove one of his vocal cords along with the cancerous mass. Small recalls waking up in the hospital, shocked to no longer have a voice.

The next few years were a struggle for Small as he went through puberty and a harsh school environment with his vocal handicap. He felt alienated from his classmates, unable to play an active role in his social world. Responding to his anxieties, he began to make questionable choices. In one particular incident, he stole his parents’ car and took it on a ride that culminated in a high-speed chase with the cops. They placed him under arrest for driving without a license. Outraged, and unable to see their own serious parenting failures, Small’s parents sent him to a Christian boarding school.

Small recalls running away from his new home repeatedly. His parents finally admitted that he had cancer, but still failed to engage in any meaningful dialogue or reconciliation with their son. Eventually, they enrolled him in therapy. Small looks back happily on his time with his clinician, whom he reimagines as the White Rabbit from Lewis Carroll’s novel Alice in Wonderland. The “White Rabbit” gave Small some much-needed tough love, acknowledging to him that his mother had a personality disorder that rendered her unable to love him. Small recalls this revelation as formative to his attempt to break free from his parents.



In the ensuing months, a couple of serious events compelled Small to run away from home for the last time. He found that his mother had been having an affair with Mrs. Dillon, the woman who originally noticed his cancer. His father also, finally, conceded that his recklessness had caused Small’s tumor to grow. Small took up housing in a boarding house. Though it was dilapidated, he was happier than ever to be living away from his parents.

As a means to escape Detroit, Small invested in his artwork, earning a BFA at Wayne State University and an MFA at Yale. Near the end of his memoir, he has become a successful art professor in New York. When he received notice that his mother was on her deathbed, he traveled to her hospital to say farewell. On the way, he screamed continuously, trying to build up strength in his last vocal cord. At the memoir’s end, Small recalls a dream in which he passes the asylum where his abusive grandmother passed. He notices his mother sweeping the sidewalk in front. They meet each other’s gaze, and she beckons for him. Small declines, symbolizing his mind’s victory over his abusive and tyrannical parents.

Stitches describes a childhood unlike any other, full of jarring experiences that would ostensibly leave any child emotionally impaired. However, by rejecting the roots of his traumas, Small illuminates a path out of victimhood, showing that one can transmute virtually any experience into a tool for creating good in the world.