How to Pronounce Knife reminds me a lot about Anthony Veasna So's Afterparties (minus the length). The writing style may not appeal to those who believe that auto-fiction is not fiction enough, but I personally like the work's intimacy and simplicity. This work collects stories of Lao immigrants who work as worm pickers, bus drivers, …

Continue reading Week 5: How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa

I'd be lying if I say the first quarter of this sci-fi novella did not confuse me. But re-reading some pages to make sure I got an information correctly meant going over for the second (or third!) time a beautifully-written prose. The premise of the story is simple and may even come across as a …

Continue reading Week 4: This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Reading Lucia Berlin's A Manual for Cleaning Women is like catching up with a close friend, listening to a talkative stranger at a park, or hearing a co-worker's genuine answer to your "How's life been?". The stories are very short, but one sentence could be very illuminating. Berlin is, for me, one of the very …

Continue reading Week 3: A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin

In her collection of critical essays, Arundhati Roy brilliantly traces the source of the world’s suffering. Roy reminds us of the role of the imperialist US in  India’s most controversial policies and projects, from nuclear bomb tests to mega dam constructions. It’s horrifying how patterns of displacement, violence, and state oppressions discussed in the book …

Continue reading Week 2: The Algebra of Infinite Justice by Arundhati Roy

My initial thought was that this book about a fictional African village occupied by an oil company would tell me things I already knew. And it did but in a more close-up account. Alternately told from the perspective of the protagonist, her family, and her group of friends, How Beautiful We Were exposes not only …

Continue reading Week 1: How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue

What does it mean when after reading a work of fiction and non-fiction set in the same country, you do not see much of a difference? Perhaps it shows how effectively the non-fiction writer uses the novelistic mode or how sharp the fiction writer reflects reality through their writing. Or maybe there are issues so …

Continue reading A Burning, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, and the Indian Criminal Justice System

Trigger Warning: Rape, sexual abuse, murder, self-harm I admit it's a bit odd comparing these two, but Melchor's Hurricane Season and Yanagihara's A Little Life are the same and different in several ways. While Hurricane Season is set in a rural Mexican town and A Little Life (mostly) in New York among the upper classes, …

Continue reading Violence and Trauma: Hurricane Season and A Little Life