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I'm usually not a big fan of short story collections, but this one was a real standout for me. I took turns reading stories in-between books and chapters throughout the month and ended up finishing it right as May was coming to a close.
"In the title story of Souvankham Thammavongsa's debut collection, a young girl brings a book home from school and asks her father to help her pronounce a tricky word, a simple exchange with unforgettable consequences. Thammavongsa is a master at homing in on moments like this – moments of exposure, dislocation, and messy feeling that push us right up against the limits of language.
The stories that make up How to Pronounce Knife focus on characters struggling to build lives in unfamiliar territory, or shuttling between idioms, cultures, and values. A failed boxer discovers what it truly means to be a champion when he starts painting nails at his sister's salon. A young woman tries to discern the invisible but immutable social hierarchies at a chicken processing plant. A mother coaches her daughter in the challenging art of worm harvesting.
In a taut, visceral prose style that establishes her as one of the most striking and assured voices of her generation, Thammavongsa interrogates what it means to make a living, to work, and to create meaning."
- from Storygraph
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It's very rare that I like every single story in a collection. Honestly even more rare that I finish a short story collection to begin with. But this one did a beautiful job of telling a variety of stories that all managed to feel connected, with all the characters representing the author's Lao heritage and experiencing some level of the out-of-place immigrant experience. I'm really glad I took the chance on this story collection, because even though they were works of fiction I felt so much honesty and truth behind the words.
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Content Warnings: Racism, Xenophobia, Death
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