And you think your life is bad..

Everyone looks back on their childhood and wishes something would’ve been better. Maybe it was a wish for something materialistic or simply more friends. A lot of people go through life thinking they have it so bad, but what if you were deliberately lied to from your parents? The guardians who are supposed to be role models for you, who are to support and protect you, who are supposed to love you. How would that make you feel? How would that create a better wish for your childhood?

In Stitches: A Memoir, the main character David Small is used as a Guiney Pig for radiation treatment which results in him developing cancer. When first getting the book, you don’t expect the emotions to be so loud strictly from graphics. This book speaks volumes and depicts a story of a young boy whose childhood is ripped to pieces from bad parenting and pure neglect.

In the beginning of the novel, David is told by his mother to not play with the wheelchairs or go onto the elevators. And what does he do? Just that. He races down the hallway with his socks on and stumbles upon this little man in a jar. Little does David know he’s looking at an unborn fetus. His brilliant imagination portrays the little man jumping out of the jar and starts chasing him down the hallway. The irony I recognized from this scene was that I see David as the little man in the jar trying to escape from his life. After he gets back to the elevator and back down to his parents he is wacked in the head from his mother because he lost his shoes. She gripes at him saying they don’t have the money for new shoes, but keep in mind his Dad’s a doctor. What doctor doesn’t have money?

Even that little slap on the head leads the path for all of the destruction his parents do to him. The most heart wrenching scene of the book was when David finds the letter his mother wrote to her mother about him having cancer. The way David Small portrays this is so realistic. He shows the letter far away and then picture by picture he gets closer to David’s eyes and starts repeating key words of the letter, especially the boy. Those two pages made my mouth drop. From then on I knew I could not put the book down. I don’t have any children but how could a parent first, not tell their child the truth about his mysterious lump in his neck, and secondly refer to him as the boy. Maybe she just doesn’t know her son’s name or maybe she really is insane?

David from that point on wakes up and stands up to his parents; well he tries. He has looked up to his parents his whole life even after being physically abused and verbally abused but this letter hits home for him. This book shows such hurt and emotion and it makes you wonder how some people live with themselves, especially David’s parents. This book commanded my attention from the first page. It showed such real life experiences that no one should face at such a young age.

Most importantly, this book shows someone who battled his whole life, and then overcame without his parents help. David ends up becoming a famous artist, and now a famous graphic novelist, without help from anyone in his family. I think that alone is enough to make the pain go away, or some of the pain. This book should be landmarked as one of the best graphic novels, if it hasn’t been yet, and I believe it’s a story that everyone should read. After reading this novel, I am thankful for my parents and how wonderful they were to me because it could’ve been so much worse.