This is what he knew how to do in the world. I watched my father carve those things all day. There he is, in a refugee camp, surrounded by those things on the wall. The photograph below is of a man and his art. I was not supposed to be there, and no one expected me to live.īut nothing in this photograph shows that. At the time, we did not know what would happen to us, what our future might look like. ‘Stateless’ is the word given to someone like me. My father tells me that this is the size of a pop can. I was born in the Lao refugee camp in Nong Khai, Thailand in 1978. My father built a raft made of bamboo to cross the Mekong River. In this new series, we give authors a space to discuss the way they write – from technique and style to inspirations that inform their craft.Īfter the war in Vietnam ended, we were some of those three million refugees nobody wanted. We featured her story ‘How to Pronounce Knife’ in Granta 141: Canada. Souvankham Thammavongsa is the author of three books of poetry: Small Arguments , Found and Light.
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