![]() Upending the narrative of immigrants sweeping in to take jobs away from Americans, Thammavongsa highlights how it’s often immigrants who get exploited, their contributions ignored. He was fourteen and he was boss.” Soon, he brings about changes that reduce the mother’s worm-picking efficiency and endanger her livelihood. He didn’t wonder if he deserved the job or not. And James? He was happy to have a job that paid so well. “She loved this job and she had been at it for much longer than James, but no one had noticed her work at all. A failed boxer discovers what it truly means to be a champion when he starts painting nails at his sisters salon. 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. “I knew what James got was something she wished for herself,” the girl thinks, pondering her mother’s situation. Named one of the best books of the month by. Then, a white boy - the girl’s classmate - copies the woman’s process and quickly becomes the manager simply because he speaks good English and agrees to initially work for free. Having mastered an improvised method, the woman’s worm counts are consistently highest among her fellow workers. In the last story of Souvankham Thammavongsa’s debut collection, “ How to Pronounce Knife,” a 14-year-old girl helps her hard-working mother pick worms at a hog farm. ![]()
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