Summary

The first story in the collection, “How to Pronounce Knife” (1), focuses on a family of Lao immigrants living in an unnamed North American city. The unnamed child came home with a note pinned to her shirt, but her mother, unable to read it, threw it away. The next day, the child came to school and everyone was dressed in nice clothes except for her—the note was to her inform her parents it was class picture day. Later, the child brought a book home. Seeing a word she did not recognize, “knife,” she asked her father how to pronounce it. He looked at the word and told her it was pronounced “kahneyff” (7). The next day at school, the child was asked to read in front of the class. She pronounced “knife” as her father had taught her, and the...