Conflict

Souvankham Thammavongsa’s short story “Edge of the World” explores several conflicts.

First, there are the inner conflicts that both the mother and the daughter experience. The mother is alienated from the culture of her home country, but also from her new life in the West and her own family. She feels deeply unhappy about her life and might also feel slightly inadequate, as her daughter soon knows more than she does. 

Part of the reason why the mother feels this way might be because of past trauma, since she experienced a war before fleeing Laos (ll. 99-100). The mother could also be lonely, as everyone around her is trying to adapt to the Canadian way of life, while she is homesick and misses Laos. This, eventually, leads to her leaving her daughter and husband. 

The narrator suffers from an inner ...