Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So

Reviewed by August Cosentino

Last December, after an all-too-brief stint as the “next yet-to-be-recognized great young writer,” Anthony Veasna So OD’d on a lethal mixture of drugs. Fortunately, he left behind a legacy of great writing, beautifully represented in “Afterparties,” a collection of short stories just published this month.

So’s writing reminds me in some ways of the early work of Philip Roth. Except instead of the Jews of Newark, he’s covering the Cambodian refugees of Los Angeles, who make their living by and large running auto repair businesses or donut shops.

Even though So was LGBT, his writing extends far beyond that world. In one story, he turns into a female nursing home attendant who faces the trauma of having to take care of a patient with dementia. It happens to be her elderly great aunt. In another, he is a single mother running a donut shop, along with two teenage daughters who suspect a customer is out to deport them (this story was originally

published in the New Yorker.) In a third piece, he is the cousin of a bride at a crazy wedding afterparty. 

The common thread of these nine stories is the snarky humor and whipsmart boldness of the language. So was totally up to speed with the slang of LA hip-hop, of Cambo (slang for Cambodian-American) millennials, while still portraying the manic behavior of their parents, first-generation Americans, to a tee. He’s also attuned to the misery that still binds all refugees from the Pol Pot refugee:  the autogenocide that wiped out one-quarter of the country’s population back in the 1970s.

A great collection of short stories, not to be rushed through by any means. I suggest you read one story, put the book down, take a walk around the block, or go for a bike ride of 40 miles (providing it’s not 96 degrees outside). Once you start the next story you’ll appreciate his genius all over again, and maybe even agree with me that the world, especially the literary world, is a sadder place without him.