How to Pronounce Knife: Stories
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Average rating3.8
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
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Book won the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize (Canada Authors Awards. 15 Short fiction stories (180 pages) about immigrant refugees from Laos adjusting to new countries, cultures and ways of life. Gets you thinking about how hard it is to be an immigrant refugee! I enjoyed this, My 1st read of 2021! David N.
It's a short story collection that brings together the worm pickers, nail technicians, bus drivers and farm workers at the edges of society. New immigrants creating space for themselves while struggling to retain their strength and dignity. And the following generation who are watching the world with sharp eyes, more conscious of the unsaid rules, attuned to how “other” they really are and their growing awareness of the gap that separates them.
I spent a lot of my time growing up paying attention. Coming from immigrants and surrounded by people who didn't look like me, I was obsessive about observing the world, paying attention to the social cues, the unsaid rules, the hurdles I had to face by being other. The characters here are doing the same thing, and yet still find themselves always a step behind. Without the benefit of a family network born and raised here for generations, or an easy familiarity with the language and WASPy customs they constantly stumble. Without the easy grace of seeing yourself reflected everywhere you look, they struggle to define themselves. And it's coming up hard against oblivious white mediocrity that wins the red yo-yo, gets the front office job, the manager position. Never done with malicious intent, just a willful blindness to the privilege they possess, certain in the fairness of this new world meritocracy.
These stories just hit me where I live.
