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How to Pronounce Knife
A Literary Fiction Short Story Collection by Souvankham Thammavongsa
Subgenres:
- Immigrant Experience,
- Short Stories,
- Family Relationships
This book is for you if you're into...
- Immigrant stories about work, language, and finding your place
- Spare, emotionally charged prose with sly humor
- Characters navigating life between cultures and expectations
From Little Stack
The Laotian-Canadian poet and author Souvankham Thammavongsa won Canada's prestigious Giller Prize for her debut short story collection, published in 2020. Taking inspiration from her own childhood and the immigrant communities she grew up in, How to Pronounce Knife is as moving as it is perceptive. The stories within are tenderly written but sharp with their sparse prose and insights into the liminal spaces between identity, family, and belonging.
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.
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