ABSTRACT
Agency is a pivotal element in the narratives and invariably linked to the issue of subjectivity and gendered identity. David and Min are shaped by different sets of gendered social relations and aesthetic sensibility. Small's graphic memoir demonstrates the capacity of the creative imagination to assist in understanding and reinterpreting childhood trauma and how the text through its words and illustrations creates an aesthetic order to the untangling of secrets, abuse, and bitter truths. Psychoanalysis serves as an intervention that reverses the path of self-destruction David was going down and allows for one where he finds hope, recognition, and success as an award-winning children's illustrator. The fact that some are appropriated from children's stories and inserted into a context of child abuse points to the role of the creative imagination as both a means of voicing suffering and an avenue for healing.
