By Frankie Martinez
Afterparties: Stories has been on my radar since its initial release in August 2021. I’m not sure what intrigued me about it at first—perhaps the rave reviews, or the colorful cover art—but as I read more about it, it seemed like it would be a short story collection with a distinct, original, entertaining narrative voice. When I eventually got my hands on a copy and read through the cover folds, I was also sure I’d vibe with these stories as a first-gen Asian American. I cracked Afterparties open with the expectation that I might see myself within its pages.
These expectations were very much met, though not in the ways I expected. Anthony Veasna So’s posthumous collection is striking in its portrait of messy, sexy, funny characters, all from a distinct and vibrant Cambodian community. It’s a world of failing donut shops and auto garages, of a grown man’s pitiful attempts to relive his glory days on the high school badminton team, of a wedding afterparty where two brothers suspect their uncle of snubbing the bride by taking back a money gift unnoticed. It’s a world that So’s surviving family members, based in Stockton, California, recognize as their own.
“Every story we told since [Anthony] was 5,” So’s mother, Ravy, told Vulture in a 2021 profile, almost a year after his untimely death. “I’m surprised that he remember.”
Its real-world inspirations aside, the collection is most notably centered on the generations of Cambodians connected to the Cambodian genocide. An example of this is depicted in the mysticism of “Somaly Serey, Somaly Serey.” Serey, believed by her family members to be the reincarnation of her Aunt Somaly, feels disconnected from her life because of a seeming attachment to Somaly’s spirit, as well as her recurring nightmares which place her in Somaly’s body during the genocide.
“I think about joking with my coworkers and being myself, nothing more. I think about returning home from work at a reasonable time, for once, and seeing Dad before he leaves for his own shifts. I wonder how it’ll feel to be rid of Somaly, to have complete ownership of my life, to move through the world without half my energy drained by memories not even mine, and then I fall asleep.”
This traumatic history looms large in the hearts and minds of the characters in Afterparties, but the collection is also steeped in modern, intrapersonal, and interpersonal dramas. In “Three Women of Chuck’s Donuts,” Tevy suspects a late-night customer at the donut shop of being a debt collector with ties to her ex-husband and the Khmer Rouge. Rithy, mere moments away from joining the military, lives in a Buddhist temple for a week in order to properly mourn the loss of his father in “The Monks.” A mother must come to grips with surviving a school shooting after her son discovers an old photo in “Generational Differences.”
Characters that are haunted by the past and struggling to live in the present don’t necessarily want to escape these realities, either. “‘But what,’ I was ready to ask, for every life Dad and I had lived and lost, ‘will we do after?’” Toby asks himself at the end of “The Shop,” in which his father’s auto shop undergoes hard financial times. So’s stories are very much concerned with what one does after surviving something terrible. I felt this keenly as I read each page, especially in “Human Development.” Anthony (also seemingly named after the author), a queer, Stanford grad living in San Francisco, grapples with dating another Cambodian who has different ideas about what life should look like for their generation of Cambodian Americans.
“‘…we don’t have the privilege of wasting time—not anymore—not with the stuff we’ve survived…’
‘That’s why you’re making a safe space app?’
‘It’s why I’m with you.’ He reached over his laptop, over the table, and grabbed my hands. ‘It means something for us to be together. You know? I hope you realize that.’
Impulsively, I withdrew my hand from his grasp…before I could stop myself and pause, before I could even begin to understand why I wanted to yell at him…I was leaving the table and heading for the bathroom, a knot of dread vibrating in my gut.”
The idea that his relationship is important because of “the stuff [Cambodians] have survived” seems to repulse Anthony, especially since he doesn’t seem to think much of what he’s doing with his life as a high school teacher. By the time he leaves the relationship, ready to teach a Moby Dick module in his “Human Development” class, he seems content with his decision to continue like he has been, even though he doesn’t know where it’s leading.
And this is where I saw myself most powerfully in this collection—a child of immigrants, under the weight of a collective, impactful history, having taken decisive steps and hoping that it will help me find a space to occupy in this world. I felt a certain relief in reading that I was not alone in that specific experience and to read it in such witty, sharp, sometimes hilarious storytelling.
Afterparties is a confident, joyful, profound debut collection. It makes me sad that So passed before this collection was even published, but his characters, survivors or the children of survivors living in the aftermath of the not-so-distant events of the past, live on to continue interrogating the universe: What do we do when we survive? How do we belong in the world? Do we get to win after a huge loss? Who gets to overcome the past in order to live in the present?
Though So gives no definitive answers to these questions in Afterparties, it feels like none are needed. The answers seem to be in the act of living itself.
Afterparties is available from Alexander Book Company, Barnes & Noble, Eso Won Books, Loyalty Bookstore, and Strand Book Store.
Frankie Martinez is a writer, reader, and editor from Southern California. Her prose has appeared in 3 Moon Magazine, Poetically Magazine, and The Winnow. She is currently a fiction editor at Miniskirt Magazine and has a slice of life column at The Daily Drunk Mag. Find out more at frankiemilktea.carrd.co.