REVIEW : Afterparties / Anthony Veasna So
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Afterparties
Anthony Veasna So
Ecco Press
Review by
Amanda Nava
Anthony Veasna So’s short story collection, Afterparties, encapsulates queer Cambodian-American culture with so much nuance and specificity that anyone from a diasporic community can resonate with his work. This work explores the unique nature of ethnic enclaves which serve as a pillar to diasporic communities. There are always recurring cast members: aunts and uncles that may or may not be related to you, the guy who sells a few years of his life to the American military for stability, the weird uncle-figure who runs the grocery store, and the queer kid forever balancing individualism vs. collectivism.
Americans have an odd assumption when it comes to immigrants. They always assume the people moving to the United States are poor, uneducated, and part of the lower class. The truth of the matter is those who move to America are often a wealthier class who can afford to do so, flee persecution during a (class) war, or both. In “We Would Have Been Princes!” Visith is wasted at the wedding afterparty. He laments how their family’s great-grandfather immigrated from China to Cambodia, seized the land, established factories, convinced the locals to work for him, and exploited their labor until the uprising. Americans have about immigrants by sharing an immigration story about the effects of a family sacrificing inherited wealth and social status for the promise of a new start in a (self-proclaiming) flourishing country.
So plays with point of view throughout the collection with stylistic choices designed to embed the reader into the community. “Superking Son Scores Again” is written in the first-person plural, emphasizing the community in this coming-of-age tale. In “Generational Differences,” a mother writes a letter to her son who’s been asking her to document her history, so it doesn’t “become lost in time.” The intimate nature and kind reflection evoke a loving, exasperated brown mom who doesn’t understand why younger generations want to relive old trauma to define the present. In “We Would’ve Been Princes” the narrator often refers to other characters with capitalized descriptors FAMOUS SINGER or RICH MING. This small detail brings back flashbacks of family get-togethers where you have to hug and kiss the same people you’ve seen all your life, but can’t quite remember their names, so you recognize them by anecdotes, personal nicknames, counties, or identifiers—like the white uncle from Yolo county who ate a whole shrimp (head and shell) to impress the family.
Before So passed in December of 2020, he was an openly queer man living with his partner in San Francisco, a city with a rich queer history. In this collection, queerness isn’t portrayed as a hindrance or caricature but as sexy, disappointing, lonely, frustrated, covert, and romantic. His characters are allowed to have passions, heartbreaking backstories, and motivations that do not revolve around queerness or how straight people perceive queer culture.
Lastly, readers witness the act of death work, which is a vital task in most cultures. In “Serey Somaly Somaly Serey” the character Serey is haunted by her previous life and repeats her previous caretaking role. All her life, Serey is forced to eat bowls of plain white rice until she’s delirious and can channel her previous self: Somaly. Serey is defined by her past life, taking up her old tasks and tending to their family, until the day that burden is passed on to someone else when the last of a generation has passed. Non-western cultures have unique death work practices, including communicating with spirits, past-life work, easing the transition from life to death, and passing on that burden onto a new generation. This story perfectly encapsulates America’s cruelty and indifference towards death work and the complications of this sacred labor.
Like in life, these short stories circle a Cambodian-American Stockton community that branches out to the Bay Area. Readers are introduced to Cambodian supermarkets, unabashed queerness, witness death work, and conversations about Khmer culture and how the ethnic identity differs from a Cambodian nationalistic identity. When writing about the diaspora, queerness, or complicated families, So proves that no experience can be easily labeled in this short story collection dripping with melancholy, intelligence, and laughter.
Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So is out August 3rd from Ecco Press.
Amanda Nava is a writer living in California.
