Souvankham Thammavongsa

With unsettling beauty and a quiet magic, award-winning poet Souvankham Thammavongsa's Cluster will awe and amaze. Acclaimed poet Souvankham Thammavongsa returns with her fourth collection, a book about meaning. Meaning can sometimes blow up, crack something we had not seen, or darken what had been seen so clear to us. Meaning can happen with so little and go on to take so much from us. Meaning can sometimes take a long time to arrive, years even, if ever. And it's possible meaning does not mean, and that in itself could be meaningful. Whatever happens to meaning, it is always there. It means even when you don't want it. Every poem in this book looks at meaning and the ways in which it arrives, if at all.

Si hay algo que caracteriza a los personajes de estos relatos es la firmeza y la convicción con las que se aferran a la vida. De una u otra manera, todos están atravesados por la inmigración y sus derivas más crueles, aunque también por momentos luminosas. Un boxeador fracasado termina esculpiendo uñas en el negocio de su hermana; una niña esconde las comunicaciones del colegio para no poner en evidencia que sus padres desconocen la cultura y el idioma del país al que acaban de mudarse; dos pequeños hermanos esperan con ansias que llegue esa única noche al año en la que recorren el barrio disfrazados de fantasmas y, sin saber bien por qué, reciben golosinas gratis; una mujer mantiene un amorío con un hombre cuarenta años menor.Idiomas, usos y costumbres, paisajes y recuerdos se entrecruzan con nostalgia y humor en Cómo pronunciar cuchillo, el primer libro de relatos de la escritora Souvankham Thammavongsa, un referente ineludible a partir de hoy de la literatura canadiense contemporánea. Thammavongsa escribe con precisión profunda y una templanza silenciosa, desapegada y emocionalmente devastadora. No hay ni un instante de más en estas historias movilizantes.Sheila Heti

"In 1978, my parents lived in building #48. Nongkai, Thailand, a Lao refugee camp. My father kept a scrapbook filled with doodles, addresses, postage stamps, maps, measurements.He threw it out and when he did, I took it and found this." - Souvankham Thammavongsa The poems of Found, with their blank spaces and small print, their language so unforgiving in detail that every letter, gesture, break, line and shape becomes for us a place of real meaning, were built out of doodles, diagrams, drawings into a work characterized by the elegance and power of its bareness--to let us see and to hold back much of what we see.

Featuring stories that have appeared in Harper's, Granta, and The Paris Review, this revelatory debut collection from O. Henry Award winner Souvankham Thammavongsa establishes her as an essential new voice in Canadian and world literature. With these startling stories, Souvankham Thammavongsa paints an indelible portrait of immigrants and refugees caught between cultures, languages, and values, and struggling to find their bearings far from home, even as they do the necessary "grunt work of the world." In spare, intimate prose charged with emotional power and a sly wit, she immerses us in the lives of watchful children, lovelorn men, and restless women, illuminating their hopes, heartbreaks, acts of defiance, willingness to laugh at themselves, and, above all, their pursuit of a place to make their own. After a boxer loses his dream of becoming a championship fighter, he finds an unexpected chance at redemption while working at his sister's nail salon. A daughter becomes an unwilling accomplice in her mother's growing infatuation with country singer Randy Travis. When a seventy-year-old woman begins a relationship with her much younger neighbour, her assumptions about the limits of love unravel. As he watches his wife gradually drift into an affair with her boss, a school bus driver must grapple with what he's willing to give up in order to belong. And in the Commonwealth Short Story Prize-shortlisted title story, a young girl's unconditional love for her father transcends the fickleness of language. Told with tenderness, wry humour, and an unflinching eye for the sometimes absurd realities of having to start your life over again, How to Pronounce Knife announces Thammavongsa as one of the most striking voices of her generation.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780316422130. In the title story of Souvankham Thammavongsa's debut collection, a young girl brings a book home from school and asks her father to help her pronounce a tricky word, a simple exchange with unforgettable consequences. Thammavongsa is a master at homing in on moments like this -- moments of exposure, dislocation, and messy feeling that push us right up against the limits of language. The stories that make up How to Pronounce Knife focus on characters struggling to find their bearings in unfamiliar territory, or shuttling between idioms, cultures, and values. A failed boxer discovers what it truly means to be a champion when he starts painting nails at his sister's salon. A young woman tries to discern the invisible but immutable social hierarchies at a chicken processing plant. A mother coaches her daughter in the challenging art of worm harvesting. In a taut, visceral prose style that establishes her as one of the most striking and assured voices of her generation, Thammavongsa interrogates what it means to make a living, to work, and to create meaning. How to pronounce knife -- Paris -- Slingshot -- Randy Travis -- Mani pedi -- Chick-a-chee! -- The universe would be so cruel -- Edge of the world -- The school bus driver -- You are so embarassing -- Ewwrrkk -- The gas station -- A far distant thing -- Picking worms

Jak wymówić knife to czternaście krótkich opowiadań o uchodźcach z Laosu, spisanych oszczędną, intymną prozą, nasyconą ładunkiem emocjonalnym i błyskotliwym dowcipem. Mamy tu przegranego boksera, który maluje paznokcie w lokalnym salonie. Kobietę oskubującą pióra w przetwórni kurczaków. Matkę uczącą córkę sztuki łapania robaków. To opowieści o ludziach, którzy muszą zaczynać wszystko od nowa, jakby życie, które mieli, nie miało znaczenia. To ludzie, którzy chcą jedynie znaleźć pracę, kochać, nazwać jakieś miejsce swoim, przetrwać. I właśnie to robią w niniejszych historiach - pogodnie, zaciekle, niezapomnianie.

Souvankham Thammavongsa's third book of poetry, Light, examines the word that gives the collection its name. There are poems about a sparkle, about how to say light, about a scarecrow, a dung beetle, a fish without eyes. Known for her precision and elegance, for her small clear voice, for distilling meaning from details, for not wasting words, Thammavongsa confirms her gifts with these new poems. Light is a work that shines with rigour, humour, courage and grit.

From Giller Prize and O. Henry Award winner Souvankham Thammavongsa comes a revelatory novel about loneliness, love, labor, and class, an intimate and sharply written book following a nail salon owner as she toils away for the privileged clients who don't even know her true name.“IliveinaworldofSusans.Igotnametagsforeveryonewhoworksatthisnailsalon,andoneveryoneisprintedthename "Susan." Ning is a retired boxer, but to the customers who visit her nail salon, she is just another worker named Susan. On this summer's day, much like any other, the Susans buff and clip and polish and tweeze. They listen and smile and nod. But beneath this superficial veneer, Ning is a woman of rigorous intellect and profound complexity. A woman enthralled by the intricacy and rhythms of her work, but also haunted by memories of paths not taken and opportunities lost. A woman navigating the complex power dynamics among her fellow Susans, whose greatest fears and desires lie just behind the gossip they exchange. As the day's work grinds on, the friction between Ning's two identities—as anonymous manicurist and brilliant observer of her own circumstances—will gather electric and crackling force, and at last demand a reckoning with the way the world of privilege looks at a woman like Ning. Told over a single day with razor-sharp precision and wit, Pick a Color confirms Souvankham Thammavongsa's place as literature's premier chronicler of the immigrant experience, in its myriad, complex, and slyly subversive forms.

From Giller Prize and O. Henry Award winner Souvankham Thammavongsa comes a revelatory novel about loneliness, love, labour, and class. An intimate and sharply written book following a nail salon owner as she toils away for the privileged clients who don't even know her true name.Ning is a retired boxer, but to the customers who visit her nail salon, she is just another worker named Susan. On this summer's day, much like any other, the Susans buff and clip and polish and tweeze. They listen and smile and nod. But beneath this superficial veneer, Ning is a woman of rigorous intellect and profound complexity. A woman enthralled by the intricacy and rhythms of her work, but also haunted by memories of paths not taken and opportunities lost. A woman navigating the complex power dynamics among her fellow Susans, whose greatest fears and desires lie just behind the gossip they exchange.     As the day's work grinds on, the friction between Ning's two identities—as anonymous manicurist and brilliant observer of her own circumstances—will gather electric and crackling force, and at last demand a reckoning with the way the world of privilege looks at a woman like Ning.     Told over a single day, with razor-sharp precision and wit, Pick a Colour confirms Souvankham Thammavongsa's place as literature's premier chronicler of the immigrant experience, in its myriad, complex, and slyly subversive forms.