How to Pronounce Knife
Stories
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4.0 • 15 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN Open Book Award, and winner of the 2020 Giller Prize, this revelatory story collection honors characters struggling to find their bearings far from home, even as they do the necessary "grunt work of the world." A failed boxer painting nails at the local salon. A woman plucking feathers at a chicken processing plant. A housewife learning English from daytime soap operas. A mother teaching her daughter the art of worm harvesting. In her stunning debut story collection, O. Henry Award winner Souvankham Thammavongsa focuses on characters struggling to make a living, illuminating their hopes, disappointments, love affairs, acts of defiance, and above all their pursuit of a place to belong. In spare, intimate prose charged with emotional power and a sly wit, she paints an indelible portrait of watchful children, wounded men, and restless women caught between cultures, languages, and values. As one of Thammavongsa's characters says, "All we wanted was to live." And in these stories, they do—brightly, ferociously, unforgettably.
Unsentimental yet tender, taut and visceral, How to Pronounce Knife announces Souvankham Thammavongsa as one of the most striking voices of her generation.
“As the daughter of refugees, I’m able to finally see myself in stories.” —Angela So, Electric Literature
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Native English speakers know that “knife” is pronounced with a silent k—but for immigrants, knowing this kind of language quirk is far from given. That sense of wonder and confusion is the driving force behind Toronto-based poet Souvankham Thammavongsa’s arresting debut short-story collection. Each of her 14 tales focus on the experience of Laotian immigrant families in North America, highlighting not just language barriers but cultural differences—there’s one amusing and poignant story about a husband trying to understand his wife’s fascination with country music star Randy Travis. Other stories can be downright gutting, like when a farmworker mother wrestles with the awkwardness of her relationship with her businesswoman daughter. How to Pronounce Knife may focus on the Laotian experience in America, but the profound emotional weight of these stories is universal.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Poet Thammavongsa (Cluster) makes her fiction debut with this sharp and elegant collection that focuses on the hopes, desires, and struggles of Lao immigrants and refugees in an unnamed English-speaking city. In one of the best stories, "Slingshot," a 70-year-old woman experiences a sexual reawakening with her 32-year-old neighbor, Richard: "It was the start of summer and I wanted something to happen to me." In "Randy Travis," a seven-year-old daughter is made to write hundreds of letters to country singer Randy Travis after her mother who can't write in English becomes obsessed with him, and watches her father wear cowboy boots and flannel in an attempt to draw his wife's attention. In "Mani Pedi," a former boxer begins working at his sister's nail salon ("It amazed him to see clients transformed. It was like what happened in the ring, but in reverse.") and pines after a wealthy white client. In "A Far Distant Thing," two 12-year-old girls have a short but meaningful friendship before they lose touch and their lives take different paths. Thammavongsa's brief stories pack a punch, punctuated by direct prose that's full of acute observations: in the final story, about a mother and her 14-year-old daughter picking worms at a hog farm, those laboring in the field "looked like some rich woman had lost a diamond ring and everyone had been ordered to find it." This is a potent collection.)
