Review: 'Afterparties,' by Anthony Veasna So

Anthony Veasna So's collection, "Afterparties," is extraordinary, both for its underexplored subject matter and for the fierce and funny voice detailing the lives of Cambodian Americans in California, from Stockton to Silicon Valley. All nine stories begin long after America's imperialist wars in Southeast Asia, including the illegal bombing of Cambodia, which led to tens of thousands of Southeast Asian refugees coming to the United States in the 1980s.

So focuses on people like himself, the children of these refugees. Born in America, his characters grapple with all the things that other Americans struggle with: love and sex and work and startups and hookups and mass shootings and finding one's place in the world, plus specifically Cambodian obligations to reincarnated spirits, monks, and parents and grandparents traumatized by war and genocide.

So's writing sparks with empathy and wisecracks, with insights into the complexity of human relationships and burdens of history. In "Somaly Serey, Serey Somaly," a young nursing-home worker cares for her great-aunt, a woman who believes that she is the reincarnation of a friend who died under the Communist regime in Cambodia. At night the tired nurse is plagued by nightmares from the spirit's point of view, working in rice fields, living in fear.

Not all of his characters are literally so haunted. The title characters of "Three Women of Chuck's Donuts" take on the patriarchy with a frying pan and a deft blow to an abusive customer's head. The boys in "Super­king Son Scores Again" idolize their grocery-store-manager coach for his past athletic glory as the "Magic Johnson of badminton." The teenage boy earning good karma as an apprentice in "The Monks" dreams of nothing so much as his girlfriend, while the queer lovers of "Human Development" dream of building an app that will bring them venture capital funding gold.

In So's masterpiece, "The Shop," a son returns to work in his father's automotive shop after college, afraid he is disappointing his parents, only to lose a customer's car and get the worst life advice ever from a wealthy customer known only as "Doctor Heng's wife." Although she knows he is gay, she advises him to marry a wealthy young woman from Cambodia for money: "And after five years, when the girl succeeds the citizenship test, you can divorce her and get joint custody of the children. Then you will invest your fifty thousand in the stock market. Your life will be established. You can be as gay as you want after your life is established. That is the plan."

The story is an ode, at once hilarious and rueful, to the tensions between the necessarily practical outlook of first-generation immigrants and the harder-to-define dreams of their American-born children.

Although So died unexpectedly at the age of 28 last year, a tragedy the New York Times has attributed to a drug overdose, the publication of "Afterparties" should be the cause of celebration, not mourning

Publishers ought to recognize this moment as a wake-up call to seek out more such voices. So himself mentored emerging writers and held writing workshops for Khmer youth. This remarkable book shouldn't mark the end of So's influence on American literature, but rather the beginning.

May-lee Chai is the author most recently of a short-story collection, "Useful Phrases for Immigrants," winner of the American Book Award.

Afterparties
By: Anthony Veasna So.
Publisher: Ecco, 272 pages, $27.99.