Review of HOW TO PRONOUNCE KNIFE: STORIES by Souvankham Thammavongsa

 3.5 Stars

Though I am in awe of Alice Munro and I do read the fiction in The New Yorker, I rarely read short story collections.  I made an exception in this case because How to Pronounce Knife won the 2020 Giller Prize.  Though I enjoyed most of the stories, I can’t say I liked them as much as I thought I would.

The 14 stories are immigrant narratives.  They examine the struggles of people from Laos trying to make new lives in North America.  They contend with language barriers and low-paying employment.  Their lives are shaped by work, and contrary to the belief by some people that immigrants take jobs away from citizens, these immigrants have less-than-glamorous jobs as school bus drivers, nail technicians, and agriculture workers:  “Back in Laos, the men who worked in this field [harvesting worms] had been doctors, teachers, farmers with their own land.” 

The parents in the stories all want the best for their children, though they cannot always help them adjust to life in a foreign environment because they lack the language, money, knowledge, and/or time.  In “Edge of the World” for instance, the father talks about wishing “he wasn’t so busy working” and describes “’What it’s like for me at work.  They all talk so fast in English.  Barking at me all the time about keeping up.  Sometimes I don’t even feel like a human being.’”  The perspectives of several children are also given as they struggle to balance two identities and cultures. 

The first story, which gives the title to the entire collection, summarizes the predicament of both parents and children.  The father tells his daughter that knife is pronounced “kahneyff” and she insists in school that this is the proper pronunciation:  “She never gave up on what her father said, on that first sound there.”  She doesn’t tell her father he was wrong, but she does wonder “what else he doesn’t know.  What else she would have to find out for herself.”  The father takes such pride in his child; when she shows him a prize she was given, “he is delighted because, in some way, he has won it too.”   

Sometimes the children protect their parents.  The girl in “A Far Distant Thing” refuses to tell her father what thief means when he asks because others have been calling him that at work:  “I wanted him to go on liking his job, to get up in the morning with a sense of purpose and pride like he did.”  At other times, the parents protect their offspring.  In “The Universe Would Be So Cruel” when his daughter is jilted, the father takes the blame:  “But how could he tell her that the boy she loved wasn’t kind or good, that he didn’t love her, that sometimes what felt like love only felt like love and wasn’t real.  He couldn’t do anything about that but say, ‘Yes, yes, it was my fault.  It is all my fault.’” 

Of course, as the children begin to fit in, the gulf between them and their parents often widens.  One girl learns in school that the world is round, but her mother refuses to believe this:  “’Just because I never went to school doesn’t mean I don’t know things.’”  The daughter then realizes “what my mother knew then.  She knew about war, what it felt like to be shot at in the dark, what death looked like up close in your arms, what a bomb could destroy.  Those were things I didn’t know about, and it was all right not to know them, living where we did now, in a country where nothing like that happened.”  And then there’s “You Are So Embarrassing” in which 13-year-old Chantakad insists on being called Celine and tells her mother, “’That’s who I am now.  I’m Celine.  And can you not talk to my friends, please?  You are so embarrassing.’” 

It is not only parent-child relationships that suffer.  Husband-wife relationships become strained as well.  In “The School Bus Driver” Jai is upset at his wife’s behaviour but says nothing because “she would just remind him how men in this country do not raise their voices at women.  Or tell him to practice his English. . . . ‘English is the only language that matters here.’ . . . And if he was going to live here, he had to learn to adapt and fit in and not be so uptight.”  In “Randy Travis” a man tries, unsuccessfully, to be what his wife wants him to be. 

As expected, many of the stories are sad.  For a woman in “Mani Pedi,” “Hope was a terrible thing . . . it meant it wasn’t there for you, whatever it was you were hoping for.”  When a man’s wife leaves him, he doesn’t grieve:  “He had done all of this life’s grieving when he became a refugee.”  In “Paris” the protagonist works in a chicken processing plant:  “The only love Red knew was that simple, uncomplicated, lonely love one feels for oneself in the quiet moments of the day.”  In “Ewwrrrkk” a woman is introduced to sex by “a man who no longer had his young face.  He did not say anything that had to do with love.  And, afterwards, there was a pool of blood on the grey bedsheet.”  There are however some touches of humour:  for instance, in “Chick-A-Chee” two children learn about the custom of trick-or-treating.

The stories are good; many readers will find much that is relatable.   When I started school, I could not speak English so I could certainly relate to the isolation experienced by the immigrants.  The stories provide realistic glimpses into the everyday lives of immigrants.  I was disappointed, however, not to learn more about Laotian culture since most of the stories clearly identify the immigrants as having come from Laos.   

I would certainly recommend this book for its examination of the experience of immigrants in today’s world, but for some reason I wasn't as impressed as I’d hoped to be.