Afterparties

March 1, 2021

Having already claimed the Joyce Carol Oates Award and been published in The New Yorker, So was poised for literary fame with this first collection when he died tragically at age 28 in December 2020. His stories assay the Cambodian American and LGBTQ communities. Sure to get--and deserve--attention; with a 100,000-copy first printing.

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Starred review from June 7, 2021
So (1992–2020) conjures literary magic in his hilarious and insightful posthumous debut, a collection that delves into a tightly knit community of Cambodian-American immigrants in California’s Central Valley. Many of the characters are haunted by memories of genocide—one, an Alzheimer’s and dementia nurse in “Somaly Serey, Serey Somaly,” is inhabited by the spirit of a deceased relative who suffered a life of tragedy under the Khmer Rouge. The protagonist of “Human Development,” meanwhile, negotiates his Khmer heritage on a more quotidian level: While at a beer pong–fueled party with his Stanford friends a few years after graduation (“Why’s the goal of this party to reclaim the culture of closeted frat bros?” he asks), he messages with another Cambodian man on Grindr, then leaves the party to hook up after confirming they aren’t related. What makes the stories so startling is the characters’ ability to embrace life and all its messy beauty despite the darkness of the past. Characters have weddings, play badminton, fall in love, read Moby-Dick, and sometimes quip, surprisingly nonchalantly, about their national traumas—“there were no ice cubes in the genocide!” yells a father in “Three Women of Chuck’s Donuts.” Some leave home (“the asshole of California,” one of them calls it in “Maly, Maly, Maly”); others want to stay, despite how little their region has to offer. After this immersive introduction to the Central Valley community, readers won’t want to leave. Agent: Rob McQuilkin, Massie & McQuilkin Literary.

July 1, 2021
Posthumous debut from an author whose short fictions appeared in the New Yorker and n+1. In "Maly, Maly, Maly," Ves and his cousin Maly escape to get high and watch porn while their family prepares for a party where monks will declare that another cousin's baby is the reincarnation of Maly's mother, Somaly. In "Somaly Serey, Serey Somaly," that baby, Serey, has grown into a nurse who is caring for the great-aunt who raised Maly after her mother died. Ma Eng is suffering from dementia, but her insistence that Serey is her dead niece Somaly fits a pattern in Serey's life. Presented with the chance to pass her haunted legacy onto Maly's daughter, Serey thinks twice about what she's doing but can't resist the possibility of being free of her family's history. Generational trauma is an undercurrent throughout this book. The protagonists of these stories grew up in California, but they are constantly aware that their parents and grandparents and aunties and uncles witnessed genocide before escaping Cambodia. This awareness manifests in different ways across the collection. Set in the aftermath of a lavish wedding, "We Would've Been Princes!" follows brothers Marlon and Bond as they try to find out if a wealthy relative stiffed the bride and groom of a cash gift at the reception. The answer to this question is important because Marlon and Bond want to please their mother by delivering this bit of gossip, but it also reveals differing attitudes about what refugees owe each other--and it involves some trickery by a Cambodian singer flown in for the nuptials. In "Human Development," Anthony, whose newish career is teaching private school kids about diversity, is at a party surrounded by insufferable tech bros when he connects with another Cambodian guy on Grindr. Anthony's reaction to the relationship that develops is shaped, at least in part, by how much he wants his own past and the collective past he has inherited to define him. Even when these stories are funny and hopeful, an inescapable history is always waiting.

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Starred review from July 1, 2021
Nine electrifying stories comprise So's debut, and while many were previously published, when read together their magnificence is enhanced as they create an interconnected Cambodian American community. Most autobiographical is "Human Development," in which the narrator is also Anthony, a gay, Stanford-degreed teacher close to his sister and who has an affair with a two-decades-older Cambodian American. The rest of So's stories happen in "the sh*ittier valley" (Central Valley's Stockton, a Cambodian American hub). "Three Women of Chuck's Donuts" features a single mother and her two daughters working late into the night; in "Superking Son Scores Again," a grocer coaches a badminton team. That coach's nemesis, Justin, is the privileged son of Angkor Pharmacy's owner, the establishment mentioned in both "The Shop," about a reluctantly returned-from-college son working in his father's failing auto repair shop, and "We Could Have Been Princes," which exposes gossipy intricacies at post-wedding afterparties. A trio of stories--"Maly, Maly, Maly," "The Monks," and "Somaly Serey, Serey Somaly"--follows a motherless teen, her first boyfriend, and her mother's reincarnation. The presciently chilling finale, "Generational Differences," portrays a mother remembering the 1989 anti-Asian Stockton school massacre. So's death in December 2020 at just 28 is heartbreakingly tragic; this exuberant publication should ensure his bittersweet, posthumous fame.

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