How to Pronounce Knife

November 11, 2019
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. Agent: Sarah Bowlin, Aevitas Creative Management.

Starred review from February 1, 2020

DEBUT In under 200 pages, Canadian poet Thammavongsa showcases 14 spectacular stories in her fiction debut. Born to Lao parents in a Thai refugee camp and raised and educated in Toronto, Thammavongsa parses her own culturally amalgamated heritage through most of her narratives here, some previously published. The collection opens with the Commonwealth Short Story Prize short-listed title story, a poignant, eyes-wide-open exploration of a young girl's embarrassed realization of how little her immigrant father seems to know. Other lingering standouts are many, including the 2019 O. Henry-prized "Slingshot," which introduces a did-that-really-happen relationship between a 70-year-old woman and her 32-year-old neighbor; "Randy Travis," in which the famous singer unknowingly plays a vital role in a refugee family's lives; "Mani Pedi," about a would-be boxer who becomes a popular worker in his sister's nail salon; "Edge of the World," about a daughter who recalls the circumstances of her missing mother's distinct laugh; and "You Are So Embarrassing," in which a mother's only contact with her adult daughter is to observe her life from afar. VERDICT Cosmopolitan aficionados of pristine short fiction--think Paul Yoon, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Phil Klay--will want to read. [See Prepub Alert, 10/7/19.] --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC

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February 15, 2020
Fourteen short stories about being Lao and working class in North America. In poet Thammavongsa's (Cluster, 2019) first collection of fiction, privilege is a concrete force, arbitrary and inexorable. Red, a woman who plucks chickens at a factory, longs for the money to get a nose job to turn hers into "a thin nose that stuck out from her face and pointed upward. Everyone who worked in the front office had that kind of nose." When a spot in the office opens up, Red's co-workers get nose jobs, but "none of them got the job. It was given to a girl just out of high school whose father worked in the front office." Other stories are about the poignant need for hope when you have nothing else: In "Mani Pedi," a failed boxer begins working at his sister's nail salon and longs for one of his clients, a woman he calls Miss Emily. "That I can dream at all means something to me," he tells his sister when she berates him. Many of the narrators here are children, which feels apt when the stories explore the vulnerability of being ignorant, of knowledge as a form of privilege: One narrator can't bear to tell her father what "thief" means after he hears his co-workers spitting the word at him. In the title story, a little girl asks her father how to pronounce knife. "It's kahneyff," he says. But when she's asked to read aloud in class, her teacher won't let her continue until she pronounces the word correctly. "Finally, a yellow-haired girl in the class called out, 'It's knife! The k is silent, ' and rolled her eyes as if there was nothing easier in the world to know." These stories, written in a spare, distant register, twist the heart; Thammavongsa captures in a few well-chosen words how it feels for immigrant children to protect their parents. But occasionally the stories lean on stereotype to make their point--that scornful yellow-haired girl, blue-eyed and freckled, has a mother who wears a black fur coat and heels and drives a "big shiny black" Volkswagen. Moving, strange, and occasionally piercing.

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Starred review from February 15, 2020
O. Henry Prize winner Thammavongsa tells the stories of immigrants and refugees and the struggles they face on a daily basis in her beautifully crafted debut collection. A Laotian father proudly prints wedding invitations with Lao lettering, but though he seems to be able to foretell the marriages of his clients based on how they want their invitations to look, his seemingly impeccable work isn't enough to replace love. Red works at a chicken processing plant plucking feathers. The women around her attempt to beautify themselves with nose jobs and fancy clothes, but they can't hide their true struggles and loneliness within. After his boxing career ended, Raymond works at his sister's nail salon and discovers the importance of holding onto dreams even in desolate situations. In the title story, a child comes to realize that her immigrant father is limited in his knowledge when she asks him how to pronounce an English word. These stories have a quiet brilliance in their raw portrayal of the struggle to find meaning in difficult times and to belong in a foreign place. Thammavongsa writes with an elegance that is both brutal and tender, giving her stories and their characters a powerful voice.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)