“Work Hard” to Find “Home”

Loneliness in Refugee Consciousness in Souvankham Thammavongsa's How to Pronounce Knife

Abstract

“‘Work Hard’ to Find ‘Home’” applies Vinh Nguyen’s seminal concept of “refugeetude” to Souvankham Thammavongsa’s short story collection How to Pronounce Knife. Focusing on the stories “A Far Distant Thing,” “Edge of the World,” and “How to Pronounce Knife,” Basmah Rahman argues that homemaking is complicated by refugee subjecthood as it is shaped by imposed narratives of gratitude, thus uniquely implicating them in Canada’s multicultural discourse. However, Rahman suggests that refugeetude, though an achieved consciousness, still leads to prolonged states of loneliness, particularly among second-generation refugees. Despite this loneliness, Thammavgonsa’s collection refuses “refugee narratives to be subsumed into a national fabric.” Indeed, refugee claims to anger, joy, silence and living beyond survival are necessary to finding home in the nation-state.