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. Return to the review of How to Pronounce Knife. A mother coaches her daughter in the challenging art of worm harvesting. A young woman tries to discern the invisible but immutable social hierarchies at a chicken processing plant. Thammavongsas prose is spare, the images she. A failed boxer discovers what it truly means to be a champion when he starts painting nails at his sister's salon. How to Pronounce Knife is a masterful collection, written with so much veracity, youll swear every word is true. The stories that make up How to Pronounce Knife focus on characters struggling to find their bearings in unfamiliar territory, or shuttling between idioms, cultures, and values. 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. Title: How to Pronounce Knife Author: Souvankham Thammavongsa Publisher: BLOOMSBURY PAPERBACKS ISBN: 9781526610454. 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. Souvankham Thammavongsa is the author of four poetry books, and the short story collection HOW TO PRONOUNCE KNIFE, winner of the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize and 2021 Trillium Book Award, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and PEN America Open Book Award, out now with Little, Brown (U.S.
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