A story of loss continues
Anthony Veasna So’s promising career was cut short. ‘Afterparties,’ with its echoes of Cambodian trauma, shows what he could do.
On its surface, “Maly, Maly, Maly,” one of the short stories from the late writer Anthony Veasna So’s debut collection, “Afterparties,” appears to be a simple vignette about two cousins hanging out for the summer before one departs for college. In between the wisecracks and pop culture references, though, So reveals what it means to come of age in the
United States for young people whose family and community were shaped by a trauma that happened in another country before they were even born.
That story, according to So’s partner, Alexander Torres, was the author’s breakthrough.
“It did everything it needed to do. It had all these parts.
It gave us a language and a fascinating story,” he says by phone. “It was incorporating all of his influences together.”
So, who was born in Stockton and attended Stanford University before moving to San Francisco, builds vivid stories set largely within the Cambodian community of central California. The author was just at the start of a promising career — So’s story “Three Women of Chuck’s Donuts,” which appears in “Afterparties,” had been published in the New Yorker in February 2020 — when he died last December at age 28 of a drug overdose.
Torres explains that So had intended to write experimental stories, but with “Maly, Maly, Maly” he found a different path. “By then, it was becoming more and more clear that he wanted to do a collection that was a little more traditional than experimental,” he says, though there would still be experimental elements.
While there are hefty doses of humor in So’s work, there’s often an undercurrent of trauma. The legacy of the Cambodian genocide is omnipresent, even if it’s only a passing reference in the text.
“It’s a big part of the stories in Anthony’s writing because it’s such a big part of our lives,” says Samantha So Lamb, So’s sister, during a phone interview.
Both of their grandfathers were killed during the genocide, and Lamb and her brother had heard stories about it while they were growing up, surrounded by relatives. “We grew up with a huge family. All of my dad’s side of the family lives next to each other,” says Lamb. “My dad and his sisters are all neighbors, live in the same neighborhood.”
The day before our interview Lamb said she heard a story from that time while having dinner with her parents.
“My family is like that,” Lamb says. “I know a lot of other families just don’t talk about it.”
In “Afterparties,” generational trauma is very much a part of the characters’ experiences. “I think one thing that’s interesting about Anthony’s work is that it doesn’t take place in Cambodia,” says Torres. “It really is a story about people who are doing their best to thrive in the aftermath of the genocide, of a tragedy.”
Lamb mentions that her parents were teenagers when the genocide happened and recalls reflecting on how she couldn’t imagine going through that during her own teen years. “Growing up, I think Anthony felt similarly,” she says, adding that she can see this in his writing.
“As I get older, especially after my brother passed, all this stuff came back to light. I’ve been talking a lot about this stuff, talking to reporters and in interviews,” says Lamb. “It makes you realize that, actually, what your parents went through — the trauma that they went through— it translates in different ways into you.”
She adds, “Generational trauma is very real.” Torres adds that, in So’s work, he’s often raising important questions about the trauma that comes with survival, about the toll that it takes on a family to move across the world and start over following a monumental tragedy. “I think the story collection is a really interesting way to think about trauma and how the characters are responding to it,” he says.
Lamb describes her younger brother as incredibly smart, the kind of person who generally excelled in every subject. It wasn’t until after his death, though, that his family realized how keenly he had been observing their lives.
“We knew that the book was being published, but we didn’t know how big it was going to be. None of us had read any of the stories or any of his writing,” she says. While he was known for always being on his computer, Lamb says, it wasn’t until they saw his writing that the family realized he had been taking notes.
“These details all show up in the book,” she says, offering the story “We Would’ve Been Princes!” as an example. It’s a story that Lamb and Torres identify as stemming from Lamb’s wedding.
“Of course, it’s all fiction,” she adds.
Lamb says she hopes readers can draw connections to the lives that So envisioned. For herself, though, the connections are much more intimate.
“The book is an homage to my family,” she says. “This is our story.”
“As I get older, especially after my brother passed, all this stuff came back to light. I’ve been talking a lot about this stuff, talking to reporters and in interviews. It makes you realize that, actually, what your parents went through — the trauma that they went through — it translates in different ways into you. Generational trauma is very real.” — Samantha So Lamb, author Anthony Veasna So’s sister
Anthony Veasna So, author of “Afterparties.”