pick a colour

by Souvankham Thammavongsa

Winner of the 2025 Scotiabank Giller Prize, Pick a Colour employs the kind of humor that leaves a bit of a bruise. Reading it makes you realize how little you actually know about the people you see every day. It’s set entirely over a single day in a nail salon, which sounds small, but Thammavongsa turns that one room into a whole universe of class, labour, and invisible lives.

The story follows Ning, a retired boxer who’s traded the ring for the manicure table. To her wealthy, oblivious clients, she’s just another "Susan"—the generic name every worker in the shop adopts to make things easier for people who can’t be bothered to learn their real ones. A sharp look at that specific type of immigrant invisibility, where you’re performing a service while your actual brain, history, and internal life are completely ignored by the person whose cuticles you’re fixing.

I appreciate the way Thammavongsa refuses to do the "epic immigrant saga" thing. There are no sweeping flashbacks to multiple generations, it’s just the friction of one afternoon, that leaves me feeling like I’ve been let in on a secret that’s hiding in plain sight at every place of work in the city. A story about what it actually costs to be seen—or to stay hidden. Lean, mean, and doesn’t waste a single word.