Literary MagNet
ouvankham Thammavongsa assembles a collection of powerful stories about longing, misunderstanding, and loneliness in (Little Brown, April). In every story characters reckon with what goes unsaid in relationships. A child observes her mother, a Laotian refugee, learning English through soap operas. A worker at a chicken processing plant notices that her boss is cheating on his wife. A young girl is mocked at school for mispronouncing the word the way her father mistakenly taught her and then, , and , among others.
