![]() ![]() Picking Worms sees a woman remember her mother’s pride in her menial job and her revenge on the high school dance date who abused her mother’s generosity while in Mani Pedi an ambitious woman’s washed-up boxer brother proves an unlikely hit when he starts working in her nail bar but he makes the mistake of falling in love. In Randy Travis a woman remembers her mother replacing her country music obsession with an addiction while in You Are So Embarrassing a mother recalls the harsh words she and her estranged daughter exchanged years ago as she waits outside her daughter’s home, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. How to Pronounce Knife quietly conveys the burden resting on a small girl’s shoulders when she’s called upon to read aloud at school revealing her father’s incorrect pronunciation. I’ve picked out a few favourites but there’s not a dud amongst Thammavongsa’s fourteen stories, all brief with a couple just a few pages long. ![]() Born in a refugee camp in Thailand, Laotian writer Souvankham Thammavongsa is a poet whose own facility for language is demonstrated throughout this fine collection. ![]() It was that title that attracted me to this collection of stories about immigrants and refugees, cleverly exemplifying the many idiosyncratic challenges English throws at those for whom it’s a second language. ![]()
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