How to Pronounce Knife

“How to Pronounce Knife” is a short story by Souvankham Thammavongsa, first published by the literary magazine Granta (in 2017). “How to Pronounce Knife” was subsequently published in Thammavongsa’s short story collection of the same name in 2020. It centers around a Laotian refugee family’s experience as they navigate their child’s education, work, and communication in their new (unnamed) country. While these circumstances are never explicitly explained by the third-person narrator, they become clearer through dialogue and imagery. The child (named Joy through dialogue) and her (unnamed) parents are the primary characters, with Joy’s teacher (Miss Choi) and classmates being secondary characters. The story deals with themes of Miscommunication and Silence, Assimilation and Belonging, and The Weight of Internal Conflict.

Thammavongsa is a contemporary writer of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. She is Laotian and immigrated to Canada as a child; thus, her work draws from her family’s experiences as Laotian immigrants. How to Pronounce Knife (2020), her first collection of short stories, won the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the 2021 Trillium Book Award, among other accolades.

This guide is based on the Granta version of the story, posted in 2017.

“How to Pronounce Knife” begins with a first grader (Joy) coming home from school with a note pinned to her, which her mother immediately discards whenever it appears on her. The mother claims anything truly important would be communicated through phone call; however, this is not the case. The father now works at a print shop and returns home every day smelling like paint thinner. The family’s home, a two-room apartment, is filled with many items ranging from a television to a small painting of a bridge by the father, a hobby he no longer partakes in.

The story follows Joy’s daily rituals: She goes to school, her mother discards any notes pinned to her, and then the family eats dinner on a piece of newspaper and watches TV. She takes chitterlings (animal intestines), a local butcher’s leftover cuts often eaten at home, to school, and other children make fun of her because of the dish’s strong smell. However, Joy is not dismayed; rather, she exclaims (either aloud or mentally), “You all don’t know what a delicacy is. You wouldn’t know a good thing even if it came five hundred pounds and sat on your face! Fools, you are” (Paragraph 3).

In addition to these daily rituals, the story revolves around Joy’s picture day (specifically, for a class picture) and the pronunciation of the word “knife.” Joy appears after school with another note pinned to her, and it is immediately discarded. The next day, she arrives at school, and everyone else is wearing suits and dresses; she herself is wearing a sweatsuit and dirty sneakers, and is positioned with the class sign to hide her clothing. Rather than tell her teacher about the discarded notes and her parents about picture day, Joy omits details and lies to “protect” her family. Similarly, her father tells her to remain silent about their Laotian heritage, though the word “Laos” is printed on his shirt.

Later in the story, Joy is reading at home and comes across a word with no image for reference—“knife.” She asks her father how to pronounce it, and he pronounces it with the “k” sound. The next day at school, she is asked to read aloud and pauses on “knife.” A classmate with blonde hair, blue eyes, and freckles pronounces the word correctly, but Joy vehemently disagrees. Joy is sent to the principal’s office, which she never mentions to her parents. However, her teacher, Miss Choi, gives her a gift for reading in class. The gift, selected from a velvet bag, is a puzzle of a plane in flight. When Joy gets home, she shares the puzzle. She and her father, who also takes pride in the puzzle, begin to put the pieces together. The border becomes clear, and they plan to complete the rest in due time.