How to Pronounce Knife

Souvankham Thammavongsa was born in a refugee camp in Thailand, rather than her parents’ homeland of Laos—a landlocked nation in Southeast Asia between Thailand and Vietnam. Civil unrest and destabilization in Laos following the Vietnam War (1955-1975) pushed many Laotian people to flee to refugee camps in either Thailand, Malaysia, or Indonesia (Lambert, Maude-Emmanuelle, “Laotian Canadians,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, 5 Mar. 2018). Once these camps became overwhelmed, Canada, France, Australia, and the United States began accepting refugees—with “over 230,000 Laotians [arriving] in the United States between 1975 and 1992” (“Laotians,” Encyclopedia of Chicago). Since many Laotian refugees came from rural areas, most did not speak English or have a formal education—which resulted in many seeking factory jobs (“Laotians”). Thammavongsa represents this reality in “How to Pronounce Knife” through Joy’s family’s struggle with English and her father’s job at a print shop. The family’s “otherness” from their community—their immigrant and socioeconomic status, as well as their race—reflects in others’ reactions. Being immigrants, their two-room apartment, consumption of a local butcher’s leftover cuts, and clothing signal their limited means as they navigate a new language and search for jobs in a new country.