Excerpt from How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Red knew, for her, it was going to be the chicken plant. She didn't have much in the chest area, and couldn't dance to music even if it had a beat. The way men never looked at her gave her the sense that the Boobie Bungalow wasn't going to be an option for her. At the plant, you made enough money to pay for what you needed. But the big things in life, the things that could make you happy, well, you just never made enough to get all that.

About two years back, the girl who worked in the front office had stood with Tommy's wife and the other wives at the company Christmas party as if she was now one of them. All their noses looked the same, sticking out in the air like that. The wives didn't talk to the girl or include her in their conversations. When the group laughed together, her laughter came a few seconds behind.

But the girl doesn't work in the front office anymore. Something about Nicole and the other wives not liking her there, working with their husbands. She was asked to take her old job on the line again. She quit after that, on account of having been someplace better.

After the front office job became available again, all the women who worked on the line did what they could to get it. Some started by getting themselves nose jobs. Where they found a surgeon was something Red didn't know. No facility around here to support that kind of thing. Maybe that's why everyone's nose looked different: some were slightly bent, didn't heal properly, or scarred badly. One girl, when she talked, her nose moved in every direction that her upper lip moved. It was like her nose was attached to that lip. Most of the girls at the plant started to come to work with their hair curled and pressed and wearing heels and office clothes. They'd change into their work gear, the plastic shower cap and the matching white plastic pullover, then change right back when their shift was over. They looked so glamorous. But all of this was for nothing. None of them got the job. It was given to a girl just out of high school whose father worked in the front office.


RED DROVE HER TRUCK into the plant's parking lot and pulled up to a spot near the entrance. There was one closer, but it was reserved for those who worked in the front office. She didn't want to park where she did and imagined the day when she'd see her big red truck up there. She turned off the ignition and got out and walked to the entrance.

Somboun was standing outside alone, smoking. When he saw her coming, he dropped his cigarette and put it out with his shoe. Then he blew into his palm to check his breath and yelled out, "Hey, Dang!" Dang was what people who knew Red called her. It means red in Lao. It wasn't her real name, just a nickname she got because her nose was always red from the cold. She hated that he called her by a nickname. It made things feel intimate between them in a way she didn't want. The way he said "Dang," it was like a light in him had been turned on and now she had to be responsible for what he could see about himself.

Wherever she was in the plant, if he was around he would head straight toward her, excited and hopeful for something to happen between them. He was there when she punched in her time card, there at the end of the day when she punched out. He followed her around as if she were carrying feed. She wondered how he never got tired of smiling so much. She would look away from him, uninterested, but he would follow her gaze. He had seen her interest in the girls who got nose jobs, had seen her taking in how everyone else was noticing them too.

"I just don't see what the big deal is," he had said. "Why go and do that to your face for?"

"She's beautiful."

"But it's not real."

"It's real to her."

"I don't see it. I just don't."

"I want to get one too, you know," Red had confessed, before she realized she should not have said that to Somboun. Now that he knew she wanted something for herself, he might think he was some kind of friend to her.

Excerpted from How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa. Copyright © 2020 by Souvankham Thammavongsa. Excerpted by permission of Little Brown & Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.