Author: littlelaosontheprairie

Review: How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa

Review by Soudary Kittivong-Greenbaum This isn’t for you This is for the lady in the back The kid that’s late to class The dad that’s invisible, dreams cast aside The lost-ambition Grandma, no-purpose Aunty And it’s all for you too. Soudary Kittivong-Greenbaum Written through the eyes of a child (more than once), a grown woman longing for her grown child, a 20-something single factory worker, a woman in her 70s, a husband completely in denial of his wife’s escapades, a teen daughter of a farmworker, each character in Souvankham Thammavongsa’s new title, How to Pronounce Knife is a glimpse into the lives of a Lao refugee or immigrant, literally and figuratively trying to make it in the world. They are in the midst, often of an identity juncture, trying fit in. They are living the mundane, the everyday. But inside their minds, and their hearts, they are trying to find meaning, to figure a place in their world. What it does differently than other works of art centered on the refugee and Lao refugee character …

Beyond Black Ops: Laos in Video Games

November 15th marks the anniversary of Operation Commando Hunt. The goal of the operation was to interdict men and supplies on the Ho Chi Minh trail, through Laos into South Vietnam during the Vietnam War, and coincidentally very close to the 73rd birthday of the AK-47, which was on November 13th. November 13th is also the anniversary of the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC. This is a small point of trivia to note as we saw the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops, Cold War on November 13th, which has a mission in Laos set in 1968. This will be another entry in the Call of Duty: Black Ops series, which began in 2010. Some of us will be watching with interest in the zombie option for many of the maps. One trailer seems to confirm that players will be able to fight zombies during the Vietnam War-era with weapons of varying realism levels. Players in the past have been able to modify many variables in these games, but not …