Afterparties audiobook

An outstanding short story collection and one of the finest books I’ve read on how generational trauma can shape and influence a diasporic community. These stories, about Cambodian immigrants and their first generation kids are exceptionally crafted, melancholy, disaffected, and very funny in parts. There is a sense of ennui that the author captures so well and there is also this beautiful sense of community however exasperating connection might feel to these varied characters , that binds each of the stories to one another.

“We can’t let your history become lost in time…” Each year, I vow that I’m going to branch out in some way with my reading habits. Try a new genre. Sample a few new-to-me authors, a debut writer or two. Move outside my comfort zones and make myself squirm a bit with my reading choices. This year, I decided that I would make a more concerted effort to grab more contemporary pieces, perhaps shortly after their release dates. And it’s truly paid off! Either I’m very fortunate in my picks, or there are a helluva lot of excellent new books and authors out there right now! I’d venture to say it’s a combination of the two that has resulted in me shouting out several times this year to Please Read This Book! "I know something about disorientation. I understand how it feels to live with a past that defies logic."When I came across the name Anthony Veasna So and the title Afterparties, I couldn’t resist – a debut, a cool title, and what promised to be a more diverse reading experience that would most likely teach me a little something. I read for entertainment, yes, but most importantly I read to expand my knowledge about people and the events that have shaped them. Anthony Veasna So is the son of Cambodian refugees and many of his stories center on a community of immigrants living in California, both the parents and grandparents who fled the genocide as well as the first generation Cambodian-American children. “Can the very act of enduring result in wounds that bleed into a person’s thoughts, distorting how that person experiences the world?”So handles with finesse the topics of race, identity, sexuality, addictions, haunting memories, traditions and religious beliefs, and relationships – both romantic and familial, especially those between the older and newer generations. The nightmare of the genocide under the Khmer Rouge regime does not overpower the story with despair, though its indelible effects are quite telling in this community. He rather brilliantly weaves humor throughout, and as a result, one is treated to a very compelling read that informs while not dragging the reader into a funk. The wish of the older generation to see their children and grandchildren succeed in this country is juxtaposed with the desire of the new generation to establish their own identities and forge their own paths, often a path quite different from what is expected of them. “Those poor parents, he imagined all of them thinking. Look at their disgraceful kids, tarnishing their parents’ reputations with drug addictions and frivolous artistic delusions. Why had those parents worked so hard for a future like this?”One thing of note is the Buddhist belief in reincarnation, something I was aware of but gained a bit more understanding of after reading this piece. While the older generation witnessed and escaped the horrors of the genocide, desiring nothing more than to establish a new, safe life for their children, the idea of a deceased relative inhabiting the body of a new family member seemed to me rather haunting. It clearly does to Anthony Veasna So as well. We see the younger characters grapple with this in some of these stories – they cannot fully escape the nightmare when ancestors are “allowed” to establish themselves over and over again in the succeeding generations. How to reconcile themselves to this?“Fuck everyone else, for burdening the two of us with all their baggage. Let’s go back to minding our own business, anything but this. Who cares about our family? What have they ever done but keep us alive only to make us feel like shit?”This is a collection of short stories, but they are tied together by certain characters appearing perhaps briefly in one story and then more prominently in another. The dialogue is sharp and witty, and the focus is on the people of this Cambodian-American community. Other than the neighborhood itself, the setting is not central to the story. There are a number of sexually graphic scenes which, given the age and openness of the author and his characters, simply added to the authenticity. No need to take a cold shower after reading, though if any of the stickiness rubs off indirectly, you may want to run the faucet anyway. Partway through this collection, I was rather excited about having “discovered” a bright young writer I could follow. I decided to look him up, only to find that he passed away at the end of 2020. What a huge loss! A ton of promise in his writing that we won’t have the pleasure to read, with the exception of a compilation of part of a novel he started, along with some other pieces he’d written prior to his sudden death. I watched a short YouTube clip of Anthony Veasna So, and he seemed just as I imagined him to be after finishing Afterparties – down-to-earth, intelligent, and yes, funny!“They imagined a future severed from their past mistakes, the history they inherited, a world in which—with no questions asked, no hesitation felt—they completed the simple actions they thought, discussed, and dreamed.”

Reading about Anthony Veasna So's death is so depressing. I'm not exactly sure what he was going through but it's always awful when people seem to pass away before their time. Especially when they seem like they had so much talent and promise.I'm glad he was able to leave a piece of himself behind in the form of these stories.The best stories here are "Three Women of Chuck's Donuts," "Maly, Maly, Maly" and "Superking Son Scores Again" with them all being pretty much interconnected, with some sharing a few characters. As someone who's been getting more and more into queer narratives, I was more than happy to read this. Other stories of note include "The Shop," "Human Development" and the last story, "Generational Differences."I'll definitely be reading this again soon.

There have been notable collections focussing on the challenges faced by second or third generation immigrants, living under the pressure to succeed in a world their forebears have struggled to provide for them. Here we have such a community, in this case from Cambodia, in Stockton, "... a dusty California free of ambition or beaches." It is particularly tragic that the author, seemingly a poster child for success of overcoming generational trauma, has died before publication. This lends particular poignance to the final story recounting his mother's experience as a teacher in 1989 when her school underwent a racist massacre. Although Anthony Veasna So didn't live to enjoy the expected positive reaction to his collection, he was able to see acceptance and recognition through the inclusion of his work in such publications as Granta, Zzzyva, and The New Yorker. He knew he had broken the fate of "... what Cambo men did ... fixed cars [as did his father], sold donuts [I had no idea], or got on welfare." At times hilarious, at times heartbreaking, at all times immersive. Thanks to ECCO for this chance to read this early.

I’m totally in love. And totally sad. Veasna So had such an expressive and unique voice, a writer who was most certainly not a follower. I don’t know how to explain it, but these stories just felt so different from other contemporary short story collections in recent years. It’s totally its own thing. And that was refreshing. Crude, heartbreaking, maddening, comical, and inventive. Queer and bursting with so much life. A beautiful exploration of the Cambodian-American / Cambodian immigrant experience and the haunting presence of the genocide. My takeaway is bittersweet: I’ll cherish this collection, but it’s disheartening to know this is all we’ll ever get from this writer. Great body of work.

It's almost impossible to separate Veasna So's debut collection from his untimely demise before its release. These stories are about Cambodian-American citizens finding their way in America while trying to reconcile with the generational trauma of genocide. For all of that baggage, I was pleasantly surprised to find Veasna So's writing witty and brimming with well-observed slice-of-life comedy. This dichotomy is used to varying effect throughout the stories in this collection, but for the most part finds a strong balance in the overlap between woe and comedy. Throughout the collection I was surprised to find so many explicit sex scenes populating the pages. Indeed, there's much of Veasna So's characters wrestling with their identities and sexuality, and that struggle is routinely revisited over sex. I thought, for what it's worth, that the relationships felt authentic in their variety, but could have been more impactful through scarcity in sex. Your mileage may vary on this. I rather enjoyed the writing even if every story didn't land for me. Veasna So's writing occasionally skews towards confusing in establishing family relationships, but I think a more thorough edit would have taken some of the unguarded voice out of the experience. It's a shame we won't get to read any other work by Veasna So, he was obviously a literary star on the rise![3.5 Stars]

Anthony Veasna So's Afteparties paints a picture of life for Cambodian immigrants and their children reorienting themselves to life in California.The book opens with the story of sisters working at their family donut shop and proceeds to tell the stories of a litany of Cambodians growing up as children of survivors of the Khmer Rouge genocide. One character, a teacher trying to help his students understand justice and diversity all while he himself struggles with being Cambodian and gay in San Francisco's tech world. Another, a nurse to dementia patients, watches as her great aunt dies and she is forced to confront her cousin, who has always hated her.Veasna is such a strong writer and his stories are compelling, complex, and deep. Though at times the stories felt a bit too drawn out, the beauty of Afterparties is that all of the characters in the various stories are connected to one another, placing Easter eggs - and commentary on immigrant life - throughout the collection. It is truly sad we lost such a strong writer so early in his career so don't miss out on reading this very special book.

It's impossible to read this book without feeling pain that a writer so intent on making each of us more human left us at only 28 years of age. Each story is arrow-to-the-heart honest, portrayals of how pity divides us and there can never be enough compassion. His mention of Hannah Arendt underscores how we must what is right, not what others command. Unlike easy pity, though, compassion demands tough self-accountability.

For those who don’t already know, Anthony Veasna So passed away at 28 this past December, less than a year before this was supposed to come out. What he’s left the world with here is a really touching collection that I think we’re lucky to have. I liked some stories more than others, but as a whole I thought these were funny and surprising and varied, but still really cohesive, with strong connections of family and different meanings of Cambodian-ness and gayness and Californian-ness throughout. It’s a great collection by an author lost way way way too soon.

Anthony Veasna So. So drew heavily and fearlessly from his own experience as a first generation American of Cambodian descent. Getting a glimpse of this subculture was fascinating but what hits the reader is how viscerally he relates his experience as an American teenager and young adult growing up in semi-rural California in the first decade of the the 21st century. His unflinching honesty and occasional but deep humor while describing the overwhelming feelings that life foists on a gifted and sensitive young person reminded me of Jack Kerouac. Lurking beneath every floorboard and around every corner is the specter, the aftermath of the Genocide perpetrated by the dictator Pol Pot on the Cambodian people. This was the world his parents and grandparents and the relatives of so many Khmer people fled to start a new life in Stockton, California. So, in describing his mother speaking to him, included two phrases that brought me to tears, “I raised you to care deeply, too much so.” And, “I didn’t want to wake you just yet.” I grew up in the 1960s in a home where my father, grandparents and their friends and relatives were all immigrants who fled the Holocaust. I’ve never read a truer description of how as a first generation American teenager you’re concerned about how you look. getting laid, getting high, but in the background there’s this history. And it’s troubling. It’s a chasm. In one story So describes ruminating on how to get through to students he is teaching in a part-time gig at a Marin County high school. Part of him thinks who cares the hell with these overprivileged kids, but another part of him wants to seize the opportunity to impart meaning and hard-won wisdom to other human beings. “I wanted my students to understand the true nature of Ahab’s hunt for Moby Dick, the profound calm of Ishmael’s aimless wandering, the difference between having ‘purpose’ like Ahab and finding ‘’meaning’ like Ishmael. I thought my students should learn the best ways to be lost.”