Thammavongsa is a Laotian-Canadian writer and her collection of short stories focus on Laotian immigrants and their children in ways poignant, funny and heartbreaking. Her characters tend to be lower class, aspiring to be middle-class, striving for a better life. For the most part, Thammavongsa isn’t focused directly on the aspiring part, but the small interactions, misinterpretations and obsessions that her characters experience. Her stories really draw on threads of race, class and gender.
There are 14 short stories in the collection, and as with any collection some were better for me than others. I enjoyed the titular story, about a girl from an immigrant family who is learning to read English in school. Her father is helping her learn to read at home, and after he tells her that the ‘k’ in knife is pronounced she pronounces it that way at her school. The lesson she learns isn’t really about the inconsistencies of English language pronunciation, but the bittersweetness of realizing her father doesn’t know everything and wanting to protect him in turn.
I also enjoyed Mani-Pedi, about a former tough guy boxer who is hanging up his competitive fighting gloes and looking for where his place in the world will be without that identity. His sister owns a nail salon and offers him a job doing mani pedis while he is realigning himself. Although he is the boxer, the sister is the dominant personality, throwing her weight and opinions around all over the place. Like the titular short story, it is the small details that Thammayongsa draws out that have struck with me- the implied health impacts that the salon workers suffer, the race and class distinction between the salon workers and their clientele, the gendered expectations in nail salons.
This one was a quick and thoughtful read, and I’d recommend it.
