How to Pronounce Knife: Stories

Michael

Rating: really liked it
A quiet and understated debut collection, How to Pronounce Knife thoughtfully explores the inner lives of Laos immigrants and their children. The stories focus mostly on women and are wide ranging in theme. In one of the best a working-class woman reflects on a brief but intense childhood friendship she had with a girl whose family, unlike her own, was upwardly mobile; in another strong piece a mother’s struggle to learn English and assimilate distances her from her daughter. Thammavongsa writes clear, swift stories that express a lot in a short space, and her work’s well worth checking out and tracking as her style develops.

David

Rating: really liked it
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.

emma

Rating: really liked it
I got too wrapped up in this collection to review each story and now I have genuinely no idea how to review this.

So I guess the crux of my feelings about it comes down to these two things:
- I found this so gripping and unputdownable I couldn't review it while reading, and
- now, a month later, I am unable to review it because I remember very little about it.

The style worked for me, and I would return to this author, but I don't know if I can enthusiastically recommend this book in light of that.

It's worth noting that I find books I like so memorable I've been able to do a reviewing-books-I-read-a-long-time-ago project for several years on end. So.

Bottom line: Good, but I can't remember why!

Shelby *trains flying monkeys*

Rating: really liked it
2.5 stars

I did not hate this book. Some of the stories promised so much goodness. There was one about Randy Travis that was probably my favorite. The problem was I just expected more. I'm always pretty hit or miss with short stories but this one was extremely readable I'm just still hungry for more.


Booksource: Netgalley in exchange for review

The Artisan Geek

Rating: really liked it


6/3/20
A great collection in which Thammavongsa showcases so many aspects of the immigrant experience: the good, the bad, the pain, the beautiful. Would definitely recommend.

28/2/20
Found it during one of my book scavenging trips through London! :D

30/11/19
One of my friends read this and recommended it to me! I love a good short story collection!

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Zoeytron

Rating: really liked it
Copy furnished by Net Galley for the price of a review.

I couldn't find my bliss with this collection of short stories.  They may have been a trifle nuanced for me.  Neither quirky nor twisted, no jaw dropping endings.  I was expecting something more O. Henry-ish.  The writing is fine, and the one entitled "Randy Travis" made me feel rather sad.  Do not let this lukewarm review dissuade you from reading this, it's based on nothing more than personal preference.  It's no one's fault but my own that I like short stories to box me in the ears.

Jen

Rating: really liked it
Hmmmmm… I went into this one with very high hopes, but unfortunately found it to be uneven, with a few stories that were standouts, but the majority falling flat. Most of the stories simply didn’t move me the way I think was intended. This feels like an odd complaint to make about a collection of short stories, but many did indeed feel too short. There simply wasn’t enough there to build much of a connection or have a lasting impact. I’ve read short stories, either standalone or within collections, that years later still have a profound effect on me when I recall them. I can’t see that happening with anything I’ve read in Knife unfortunately. I’m honestly not sure how many I’ll recall at all after a week or two. 

The writing style was also very simple, and while I understand this was likely an intentional stylistic choice, it wasn’t for me. Because of the brevity and simple prose, it reads like non-fiction. Almost a “Humans of New York”, but focused specifically on Lao immigrants. I would in fact enjoy something like that, but in a fiction collection I’m looking for something else. That is of course personal preference, and other readers will likely appreciate what I did not. 

The standouts for me: Randy Travis, Paris, You are so Embarrassing, and Picking Worms. Chick-a-Chee I found to be adorable when reading, but while sitting down to write a review, I realized it had the feeling of a cute anecdote you’d tell from your childhood at a party, versus something that had any kind of heft. Perhaps my expectations just did not line up with the author’s intentions for this collection. I’d still be interested in other works from Thammovongsa, and I do want to acknowledge that I did find one of this collection’s huge strengths to be how well the themes of the immigrant experience and family dynamics were handled.

Hannah

Rating: really liked it
I enjoyed these stories a lot with their thoughtful explorations on families, focussing on the lives of Laos immigrants and their children. I particularly enjoyed that the parents depicted really do try to do the best for their children (especially contrasted to the horrible parents in this years crop of Women's Prize longlisted books) even if they sometimes miss the mark or sometimes cannot be the parent they would love to be if they had more time/ money/ knowledge.

I received an arc of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Blair

Rating: really liked it
I read a lot; I've been writing reviews for nearly ten years now. And inevitably, in any given year, there'll be a handful of books I find myself with little to say about. There's absolutely nothing I actively disliked about How to Pronounce Knife, but I can also barely remember anything about it, despite finishing it just a few days ago. This is a quiet collection of short stories which gives glimpses into people's everyday lives, and I guess that's a form that doesn't really speak to me, or didn't in this instance. The story I liked most was 'Paris'. Skimming back over it, I see there are some beautiful sentences, though I have retained an impression of atmosphere rather than a clear idea of what happened in it.

I received an advance review copy of How to Pronounce Knife from the publisher through NetGalley.

TinyLetter

Michael Finocchiaro

Rating: really liked it
This is a beautiful but depressing collection of short stories about the lives of Laotian woman refugees and immigrants to the Americas. It is not violent, but it shows the particularly depressing narrow limits of the lives of poor Asians in various communities. The text is limpid and the characters are charming and endearing. It reminded me somewhat of Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies (Pulitzer 2000). In any case, a good collection of stories, but not as good as either The Office of Historical Corrections or The Secret Lives of Church Ladies in terms of this year's best short story collections.

fatma

Rating: really liked it
2.5 stars

Never am I more aware of how subjective my reviews really are than when I try to review a book like How to Pronounce Knife. Clearly the fact that my reviews represent my opinions and not some universal objective fact is not a groundbreaking discovery to make, but it's something that becomes especially salient to me when it comes to a book that I didn't enjoy for no other reason than: it just wasn't to my taste.

There is nothing egregiously wrong about How to Pronounce Knife, but there is also nothing about it that is particularly memorable or impressive. It's a perfectly fine collection of short stories with perfectly fine writing. Thematically, it focuses on how Asian immigrant identity, primarily Southeast Asian, interacts with and operates in family life, romantic relationships, and, more broadly, culture. It's a collection that reads very quickly, largely owing to its stripped-back, concise writing style and the brevity of its stories' length.

Though I can see other people enjoying its sparse and to-the-point writing, I unfortunately can't say that this a collection that will personally stick with me in any way.

Thanks so much to Penguin Random House Canada for providing me with an e-ARC of this via NetGalley!

Rachel

Rating: really liked it
What an impressive debut! The writing is razor sharp, the stories ranging from poignant to delightful. I especially loved “Randy Travis” and “You Are So Embarrassing,” but there wasn’t a story I didn’t enjoy. A book to watch for in 2020 for sure.

Maxwell

Rating: really liked it
An excellent debut collection of short stories! Many of them featuring Laos immigrant characters building a new life, making a home in a new country. I loved the tone of so many of these stories: a mixture of nostalgia and hope but also the bleak reality of life and how we grasp on to certain things or have dreams, regardless of if they come true, in order to help us get through each day. My personal favorite was “Slingshot” but I also loved “Randy Travis” and “Mani Pedi.”

jenny✨

Rating: really liked it
I was very excited for this collection because I'd previously read Thammavongsa's poetry, Light, for a first-year English course—and I absolutely adored its poignant ferocity, its delicate beauty.

Unfortunately, these short stories didn't do it for me. :(

I LOVED the ownvoices Lao rep (more stories by Canadian authors of colour, please!) but found the stories overall to be too on-the-nose and lacking subtlety.

These are not inherently negative qualities, but they didn't add to my personal enjoyment of this collection.

The heavyhandedness of themes—family, loss, displacement and immigration, assimilation, shame—felt, weirdly, to me, like the stories were being written for the comprehension of non-POC audiences. As a person of colour and diaspora who has undergone similar experiences, I don't need this sort of pain and trauma spelled out with explicit banality (“Don’t speak Lao and don’t tell anyone you are Lao. It’s no good to tell people where you’re from.” The child looked at the centre of her father’s chest, where, on this T-shirt, four letters stood side by side: LAOS.).

I don't need it spelled out, because I know this sort of hurt.

That being said, there were undoubtedly moments of that recognizably tender yet ferocious poignancy that I associated with Thammavongsa's poetry. In particular, I loved the standout complexity of “Picking Worms” and “Randy Travis,” and the uplifting playfulness of “Chick-a-Chee!”

◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️

Bottom line: How to Pronounce Knife captures one facet of the complicated immigrant, refugee, newcomer, diasporic experience, and particularly for Lao folk. This is incredibly important and necessary and deserving of celebration.

And still, in 2021 and beyond, I believe there is space for even more (ownvoices) stories that tell of complex experiences that non-immigrant, non-POC audiences do not necessarily understand.

Faith

Rating: really liked it
This is a collection of short stories about Laotian Americans. They are written in a very straight forward, unembellished manner. Some are quite short and none of them has any real resolution. They are just glimpses of a situation. I liked all of the stories, but I particularly liked: “How to Pronounce Knife” in which a young girl accepts that her father isn’t perfect; “Randy Travis” in which a mother becomes obsessed with the singer; “Chick-A-Chee” about a novel trick or treating technique and “Picking Worms” about loyalty. Since I am not that big a fan of short stories, I hope the author writes a novel next. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.