I’ve read a few of Tonya Liburd‘s stories now, and I think there are two facets that I’m starting to associate with a Liburd story: One, the protagonists are drawn with just enough strokes of the pen to create a character, but not so many that a reader can’t easily picture themselves in the character’s place. It’s a delicate balance, and it’s one Liburd does well, especially when dealing with trauma and survivors. Second, those traumas and survivors are dealt with in a way that feels real, even when there’s speculative elements like there are in “A Stitch in Time.”
The narrative of the tale centres around a man who has lost his girlfriend and is grieving, but from the moment the tale opens, it’s clear there’s more to it than this. He isn’t just grieving, he’s borderline shattered, and is barely holding on to normalcy. As the tale progresses we learn he’s a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, and his own sexuality—and sex drive, in specific—are conflated with this trauma; his girlfriend was one of the few people with whom he could feel “normal.”
The speculative element of the story involves this man having the gift to travel back to any time and relive it via a photograph, and also in his meeting a women who has a gift with any metal tool she creates. These gifts are treated as just another facet of the world around them, in that wonderful way speculative fiction has, but there’s also a sense that these gifts very much relate to their pain and trauma and survival. Ultimately, I loved where Liburd chose to take the end of the story, and where she leaves the characters: on a healthier, hopeful trajectory, but without any sense of a simple “cure.”
'Nathan Burgoine 