Within this emotionally troubled environment, the young protagonist develops cancer in the throat at fourteen and, without his consent, has a vocal cord removed, which severely hinders his ability to speak.
Small's mother is cold and withdrawn: virtually uncommunicative, "Mama had her little cough … Once or twice, some quiet sobbing, out of sight … Or the slamming of kitchen cupboard drawers. The treatment, consisting of "the many x-rays that were supposed to cure my sinus problems," are carried out in a basement rendered as a cross between a prison hospital and an abattoir (21). His father is an aloof, career-driven radiologist so committed to his work that he even subjects his young son to excessive radiological treatments - later theorized as the "cause" of David's cancer - in the basement of the family's suburban home. Small's memoir charts the author's early life to the age of sixteen, growing up in a frightening and emotionally distant family. As Small's memoir reveals, such withholding marks one important way in which culture can disable some people with illnesses by turning them into voiceless, infantilized objects of medical knowledge that cannot be trusted to be informed subjects. Largely told through the eyes of a thirteen year old suburban Detroit boy facing throat cancer and the near total loss of his voice, the book is a black and white exploration of the consequences that may befall some people with physical impairments when information about their bodies is withheld from them. Do children have a right to know about what is going on in their own bodies? Should parents tell a sick child just how sick he or she is or should they shield their children from such information? And if parents do hide the truth, what consequences can that deception have for a child frightened by the mysteries of the medical establishment, by the changes she sees happening to her body, and by the recognition that her parents are keeping something important from her? These questions structure both the story and the art in David Small's illuminating graphic narrative memoir, Stitches.
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