Stiches: The Graphic Memoir Of David Small

Stiches, the graphic memoir of David Small, images the industrial city of Detroit, where he formed his childhood memories. Living in a family which disregard their children’s opinions, David often carved himself an identity inside his notebook by depicting dynamic pictures. Unlike David, I was born and raised in a family with respect toward my perspective and sentiments as a child; however, I used to suffer from self-denial during my school year which somehow connects my experience with David’s. Victims of silence and denial who find no voice to express their reality, not only lose their identity as a person in society but also endure profound psychological wounds. David’s voicelessness was a consequence of living with a family who denied

When I was studying in middle school, I used to attend extracurricular workshops to get prepared for a Physics Tournament – an annual competition between the students of different school in order to construct paper bridges that were the most tolerant to the weight. My story begins in these workshops where teachers frequently asked students for teamwork and collaboration so they can come up with novel ideas to design, construct, or repair their paper bridges. At the beginning of the day, we were divided into small groups where we were supposed to share our thoughts with one another. My team members all came up with brilliant ideas to apply to the project; nevertheless, my ideas were always denied. They were not denied by my classmates, but they were denied by their own creator. The negative impacts of my self-denial were profound, and they affected many aspects of my personal and social life. After a couple of workshop sessions, my classmates commenced to stay away from me; no one was willing to select me as a team member, and worst of all, I started to find myself isolated sitting at the back of the classrooms thinking how absurd my ideas