Immigration and Alienation

Almost all of the characters featured in How to Pronounce Knife are Lao immigrants or the children of Lao immigrants/refugees. The author, Souvankham Thammavongsa (who is Lao herself), is interested in exploring how immigration and assimilation can be traumatizing and confusing processes that often leave lasting scars. In “Randy Travis,” the main character's mother develops a fixation on the titular country singer because she is lonely, isolated, and unhappy. She starts out listening to the radio simply because it is a voice talking to her, even if she cannot understand the language. She seems to funnel all of her hope for a better life into her love for Randy Travis, and when she eventually tires of that, she moves on to gambling. In this case, the trauma and loneliness essentially eat her up from inside until she is a shell of a person...