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Thursday, November 08, 2007

Sarah Leavitt's My Mom Got Sick and Died

From Maisonneuve:

Graphic memoirist Sarah Leavitt may draw within boxes, but she lives outside them. For six years, she kept a journal in pictures of her mother’s final years with early onset Alzheimer’s. “I had to record this strange experience.” She crafted a chapbook in the summer of 2005 and enrolled at the University of British Columbia where one of her instructors told her she’d found her medium in the graphic novel. She scrapped the prose project she had planned and went on to submit the first illustrated MFA thesis that UBC’s creative writing department had seen in its 42-year history. Leavitt is now seeking a publisher for her graphic memoir, My Mom Got Sick and Died, in which she writes candidly—sometimes heartbreakingly so—about her mother’s death, and through comedy and grief, reveals intimate details that speak to the strength of love.

Megan Stewart: At what point did you begin writing and illustrating the story of your mother’s experience with Alzheimer’s?

Sarah Leavitt: I started writing about my mom in my journal in 1998, when we first saw signs that she was ill. It was such a strange experience to watch my mom slowly lose her memory and her ability to speak and move. When I was with her I would draw sketches of our interactions and make notes of the strange things she said—like she would lose words or make up new ones or just say things that did not make sense. I tried to record the moments that broke my heart most as well as those that were funny or joyful.

MS: The text and illustrations in your graphic memoir are all done by hand, and could be called coarse and makeshift, but the effect is inviting, even conversational.

SL: Coarse? Makeshift? Hmmm. Do you mean sketchy? Not slick? Simple? That's how I have always drawn and written. And I think that is why the graphic novel is the form that I'm working in. It's a very instinctive or immediate way for me to work. I am always drawing, doodling, sketching—and also writing notes about things I see and think. So the graphic novel is like a polishing of this.


Read the whole interview

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1 Comments:

At November 08, 2007, Blogger lucille104 said...

thank you rachel. this post means more to me than you will ever know.

lucille

 

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