In How to Pronounce Knife, poet Souyankham Thammavongsa's first story collection, immigrant and refugee characters who find themselves divorced from familiar surroundings struggle to find a place for themselves economically, socially and existentially. In the title story, a girl tries to adapt to an illogical school system while sensing the tension rising in her own family. "Slingshot" tells the story of a 70-year-old woman who begins an affair with a much younger man after the death of her husband. A young woman recounts the sometimes joyful but often painful memories of her mother in "Edge of the World," and another girl faces her own coming of age in dual worlds, one of boys and school dances and another of menial labor with her determined mother, in "Picking Worms."
With spare, precise prose, Thammavongsa evokes a world of strong emotion made livable by painful, unstable social constraints. The syntactical simplicity of the writing throws the internal complexity of these characters and their situations into stark relief, displaying how restraint can pack an unexpectedly sentimental punch. Quietly poetic, How to Pronounce Knife also produces a shivering recognition in its readers. Whether portraying a jilted bus driver, a former boxer-turned-pedicurist or a daughter desperate to make a connection with her mother, these stories capture the heart-wrenching desperation, love and desire that connects them all. And while these 14 tales are structured around each character's specific experience, they come together as pieces in a larger, universal puzzle to depict the basic human desire "not to be alone in the dark." --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor