Purpose

David Small did not have an ideal childhood. He didn’t grow up knowing the joys of was most people would recall if they were to think back to growing up; being involved in sports or activities and playing with friends. No, David’s world as a young boy was very different from the ideal. He had a life changing surgery that he was never prepared for or given any direction as to how to handle. He had an incredibly dysfunctional family life that left him feeling isolated and alone. David had no outlet, not only did he have no one to communicate his feelings and emotions to but he had lost one of the most important methods of everyday communication; his ability to speak.

Children’s books were a starting point for David when it came to expressing his deeper emotions. He expressed in an interview that, “[his] kids’ books all have darkness to them,” (Konigsberg) demonstrating his repressed emotions of his own personal childhood. He then states that, “[he] reached a point when [he] had to stop with the metaphors if [he] was going to work out all these repressed feelings.” (Konigsberg) This realization was the beginning of what would become his personal memoir. David needed to find a way to express himself, and he had learnt that he could do so through writing. His book Stitches was written for a number of reasons. David needed to channel his inner emotions, which he had kept mostly to himself, into something constructive, he needed a way to find his voice and tell his story, and he needed to do this to allow healing to happen. Something he had been struggling with all his life.

The link below brings you to a newspaper article reviewing Small's book Stitches as well as accounting an interview conducted with Small.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/books/07small.html?_r=0

Konigsberg, Eric. “Finding a Voice in a Graphic Memoir.” The New York Times.6 Sept. 2009. Web. October 2015.
Small, David. Stitches: A Memior--. New York: W.W. Norton, 2009. Print