How to Pronounce Knife

“The note had been typed out, folded over two times. It had been pinned to the child’s chest. It could not be missed. And like all the other notes that went home with the child, her mother removed the pin and threw it away.”

Joy’s teacher, Miss Choi, took the time to type a note and pin it to Joy. It contains important information, but is promptly removed when Joy gets home. Thus, this quote is the first moment of miscommunication in “How to Pronounce Knife.”

“On the wall of the main room was a tiny painting with a brown bend at the centre. That brown bend was supposed to be a bridge, and the blots of red and orange brushed in around it were supposed to be trees. It was her father who had painted this. Now he doesn’t paint anything like that, not since he started at the print shop, smelling like the paint thinner he was around all day.”

Though Joy’s father works with paint (at a print shop), he himself no longer paints. His small painting of a bridge thus symbolizes the family’s life before immigrating, a “bridge” they continue to cross while navigating new lives.

“When the child took these items to school, other children would tease her about the smell. What that smell was that was so bad, the child had no idea.”

Joy does not understand why she is teased for her lunches—specifically, her chitterlings (animal intestines)—at school. Her meals represent her family’s Laotian heritage, something she takes pride in regardless of others’ opinions.