What kind of man was Randy Travis, with his health, his looks, his fame, and his money, that he should ever have anything to cry about?”īut he indulges her, and starts to wear jeans and cowboy boots, even taking her to see Travis in concert. In “Randy Travis,” a woman becomes obsessed with the titular music star, much to the consternation of her husband, who doesn’t see the appeal: “He thought it was ridiculous to be moaning about love so much. “What else she would have to find out for herself.”įamily relationships form the basis for several of the stories in the collection. “As she watches her father eat his dinner, she thinks of what else he doesn’t know,” Thammavongsa writes. The title story features a heartbreaking scene in which the young girl asks her father for help in pronouncing the word “knife” he insists that the “k” is voiced, which leads to the girl embarrassing herself at school. The man, like most of the characters in Canadian poet Thammavongsa’s excellent fiction debut, is an immigrant to North America from Laos, trying to adapt to life in a country that’s often hostile. “Don’t speak Lao and don’t tell anyone you are Lao,” a father tells his daughter in the title story of Souvankham Thammavongsa’s new collection, “How to Pronounce Knife.” “It’s no good to tell people where you’re from.”
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