What do you think?
Rate this book
Songs on Endless Repeat: Essays and Outtakes
A Most Anticipated Book of 2023 from: LA Times * Boston Globe * The Millions * LitHub
By the New York Times bestselling author of the award-winning AFTERPARTIES comes a collection like none other: sharply funny, emotionally expansive essays and linked short fiction exploring family, queer desire, pop culture, and race
The late Anthony Veasna So’s debut story collection, Afterparties, was a landmark publication, hailed as a “bittersweet triumph for a fresh voice silenced too soon� (Fresh Air). And he was equally known for his comic, soulful essays, published in n+1, The New Yorker, and The Millions.
Songs on Endless Repeat gathers those essays together, along with previously unpublished fiction. Written with razor-sharp wit and an unflinching eye, the essays examine his youth in California, the lives of his refugee parents, his intimate friendships, loss, pop culture, and more. And in linked fiction following three Cambodian American cousins who stand to inherit their late aunt’s illegitimate loan-sharking business, So explores community, grief, and longing with inimitable humor and depth.
Following “one of the most exciting contributions to Asian American literature in recent years� (Vulture), Songs on Endless Repeat is an astonishing final expression by a writer of “extraordinary achievement and immense promise� (The New Yorker).
By the New York Times bestselling author of the award-winning AFTERPARTIES comes a collection like none other: sharply funny, emotionally expansive essays and linked short fiction exploring family, queer desire, pop culture, and race
The late Anthony Veasna So’s debut story collection, Afterparties, was a landmark publication, hailed as a “bittersweet triumph for a fresh voice silenced too soon� (Fresh Air). And he was equally known for his comic, soulful essays, published in n+1, The New Yorker, and The Millions.
Songs on Endless Repeat gathers those essays together, along with previously unpublished fiction. Written with razor-sharp wit and an unflinching eye, the essays examine his youth in California, the lives of his refugee parents, his intimate friendships, loss, pop culture, and more. And in linked fiction following three Cambodian American cousins who stand to inherit their late aunt’s illegitimate loan-sharking business, So explores community, grief, and longing with inimitable humor and depth.
Following “one of the most exciting contributions to Asian American literature in recent years� (Vulture), Songs on Endless Repeat is an astonishing final expression by a writer of “extraordinary achievement and immense promise� (The New Yorker).
240 pages, Hardcover
First published December 5, 2023
54 people are currently reading
5001 people want to read
About the author
Anthony Veasna So
5Ìýbooks216ÌýfollowersAnthony Veasna So was a graduate of Stanford University and earned his MFA in fiction at Syracuse University. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, n+1, Granta, and ZYZZYVA.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 110 reviews
January 10, 2024
I was worried this would be filled with junk salvaged from Veasna So's desktop after his sudden death, but it turns out this writer is as good as I thought he was after reading Afterparties. A substantial percentage of this is pieces of what I assume would have been a novel or a series of linked short stories, and these fragments are nearly all very very good. I wanted to know so much more about the central characters, Darren, Vince and Molly, their families. I wanted more info on the specifics of their (maybe) inheritance from their cool aunt whom they loved, but also saw as nothing more than the money she would leave them and thus free them up from the need to actually work for their living rather just live in their self-indulgent bubbles.
There are a number of essays included here that were previously published (mostly in n+1) that are interesting though many are the work of someone who has not grown out of the belief that intellect and discernment are the most important, perhaps the only important, qualities. These essays remind one of how young Veasna So was, barely out of college, just a couple years older than my son who, like this author. is amazing but very much a work in progress. The review of Crazy Rich Asians, or the criticism of the "smart" reality television movement (think Queer Eye, Love on the Spectrum, etc.) or the observations on how one should read are pretentious and impatient, but in each of them there is some incredibly smart reflection and also in each of them there is some next level writing. I have little doubt that Veasna So would have continued to evolve and get better. His is a loss to literature as well as to those who loved him.
One high point for me: When I read Afterparties I kept thinking how similar the habits, behaviors and humor of the older Cambodians who had survived the genocide were to the Jews I knew who survived the pogroms and the holocaust. I mentioned that in my review I think. So I was gratified when Veasna So mentions in an essay here that Americans conflate all Asians, but that Cambodians are nothing like the Chinese, rather they are like Jews. It was great to feel like I really understood this author's intentions and messaging and it helped me see better the connection between me and other 1st and 2nd gen people who are the children and grandchildren of refugees.
There are a number of essays included here that were previously published (mostly in n+1) that are interesting though many are the work of someone who has not grown out of the belief that intellect and discernment are the most important, perhaps the only important, qualities. These essays remind one of how young Veasna So was, barely out of college, just a couple years older than my son who, like this author. is amazing but very much a work in progress. The review of Crazy Rich Asians, or the criticism of the "smart" reality television movement (think Queer Eye, Love on the Spectrum, etc.) or the observations on how one should read are pretentious and impatient, but in each of them there is some incredibly smart reflection and also in each of them there is some next level writing. I have little doubt that Veasna So would have continued to evolve and get better. His is a loss to literature as well as to those who loved him.
One high point for me: When I read Afterparties I kept thinking how similar the habits, behaviors and humor of the older Cambodians who had survived the genocide were to the Jews I knew who survived the pogroms and the holocaust. I mentioned that in my review I think. So I was gratified when Veasna So mentions in an essay here that Americans conflate all Asians, but that Cambodians are nothing like the Chinese, rather they are like Jews. It was great to feel like I really understood this author's intentions and messaging and it helped me see better the connection between me and other 1st and 2nd gen people who are the children and grandchildren of refugees.
August 30, 2023
Songs on Endless Repeat: Essays and Outtakes is a posthumous collection of non-fiction pieces that have been previously published elsewhere intermixed with the author's unfinished novel Straight Thru Cambotown.
There are 6 essays and 8 'short stories' (all the stories tie together to create a latticed view of a Cambodian family in California following the death of their influential aunt).
I loved everything about this. In ways I would compare this to by Marina Keegan which I read back in 2014 and adored; still do. Anthony Veasna So's voice is so strong. He's witty and cynical but also hopeful and serious. His voice, I discovered through his essays and his fictional characters, is varied, but also consistent. I appreciated how he explored so many themes with ease: gender and sexual expression, the artist versus capitalism, the malaise of Millennial life, the immigrant child experience. He does all of this with a keen eye and a love for his subjects. He's not the author to toy with his characters or readers' emotions just for the fun of it. Everything he wrote felt authentic and real, even at the risk of upsetting people (readers or characters alike).
Now I need to go read immediately!
[Thank you to Ecco Books for an early copy for review. All thoughts & opinions are my own.]
On Sale: December 5, 2023
There are 6 essays and 8 'short stories' (all the stories tie together to create a latticed view of a Cambodian family in California following the death of their influential aunt).
I loved everything about this. In ways I would compare this to by Marina Keegan which I read back in 2014 and adored; still do. Anthony Veasna So's voice is so strong. He's witty and cynical but also hopeful and serious. His voice, I discovered through his essays and his fictional characters, is varied, but also consistent. I appreciated how he explored so many themes with ease: gender and sexual expression, the artist versus capitalism, the malaise of Millennial life, the immigrant child experience. He does all of this with a keen eye and a love for his subjects. He's not the author to toy with his characters or readers' emotions just for the fun of it. Everything he wrote felt authentic and real, even at the risk of upsetting people (readers or characters alike).
Now I need to go read immediately!
[Thank you to Ecco Books for an early copy for review. All thoughts & opinions are my own.]
On Sale: December 5, 2023
January 13, 2024
I think this quote sums up this whole collection, and I think that this is a good thing.
"...you might register this sonic experience as little more than the disjointed racket of pretentious slackers...I am embarrassed to confess that that was exactly the kind of art we studied and emulated."
The whole collection is good to great, but the last essay, "Baby Yeah," which you can read online, is stunning and heartbreaking and everything you would want a piece of writing to be.
"...you might register this sonic experience as little more than the disjointed racket of pretentious slackers...I am embarrassed to confess that that was exactly the kind of art we studied and emulated."
The whole collection is good to great, but the last essay, "Baby Yeah," which you can read online, is stunning and heartbreaking and everything you would want a piece of writing to be.
June 21, 2024
Rating: 4* of five
The Publisher Says: By the New York Times bestselling author of the award-winning AFTERPARTIES comes a collection like none other: sharply funny, emotionally expansive essays and linked short fiction exploring family, queer desire, pop culture, and race
The late Anthony Veasna So’s debut story collection, Afterparties, was a landmark publication, hailed as a “bittersweet triumph for a fresh voice silenced too soon� (Fresh Air). And he was equally known for his comic, soulful essays, published in n+1, The New Yorker, and The Millions.
Songs on Endless Repeat gathers those essays together, along with previously unpublished fiction. Written with razor-sharp wit and an unflinching eye, the essays examine his youth in California, the lives of his refugee parents, his intimate friendships, loss, pop culture, and more. And in linked fiction following three Cambodian American cousins who stand to inherit their late aunt’s illegitimate loan-sharking business, So explores community, grief, and longing with inimitable humor and depth.
Following “one of the most exciting contributions to Asian American literature in recent years� (Vulture), Songs on Endless Repeat is an astonishing final expression by a writer of “extraordinary achievement and immense promise� (The New Yorker).
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: There are very few things I am more moved, saddened, and affected by than the early death of a promising artist. Basquiat, Heath Ledger, Anthony Veasna So, all dead from random bad luck. All gay guys (yeah, I said it about Legder, my gaydar goes DEFCON-5 every time I see him) who didn't get to finish their rough-edged bumptious growing processes. That is very much the feeling I had reading this collection of the gone-too-soon Author So's bits and bobs.
There's a kind of youthful arrogance, a judgment-passing superior smirk that shades into a sneer, in all the essays. It's to be expected, he was lionized early and often. He wasn't wrong, or wrong-headed; he was cocksure and unaware, in his youth, that being unsympathetic in your judgments doesn't make them stronger. In time perhaps that would've worn off, and he'd've reserved the sharpness of his eyes for more worthy opponents.
His fiction fragments in here point to an idea for a novel that could have turned into something interesting had he had time and some very good guidance. The fact is there was raw talent here, there was a Voice, and that loss is horrible. That it was down to self-destructive behaviors makes me think that the work we have now might have been all we ever got, living or dead. Many many addicted folk with powerful talents lose the war in themselves.
Not really recommended on its own; the reason to read it is that it feels like an act of mourning for what we all lost when he died of an overdose.
The Publisher Says: By the New York Times bestselling author of the award-winning AFTERPARTIES comes a collection like none other: sharply funny, emotionally expansive essays and linked short fiction exploring family, queer desire, pop culture, and race
The late Anthony Veasna So’s debut story collection, Afterparties, was a landmark publication, hailed as a “bittersweet triumph for a fresh voice silenced too soon� (Fresh Air). And he was equally known for his comic, soulful essays, published in n+1, The New Yorker, and The Millions.
Songs on Endless Repeat gathers those essays together, along with previously unpublished fiction. Written with razor-sharp wit and an unflinching eye, the essays examine his youth in California, the lives of his refugee parents, his intimate friendships, loss, pop culture, and more. And in linked fiction following three Cambodian American cousins who stand to inherit their late aunt’s illegitimate loan-sharking business, So explores community, grief, and longing with inimitable humor and depth.
Following “one of the most exciting contributions to Asian American literature in recent years� (Vulture), Songs on Endless Repeat is an astonishing final expression by a writer of “extraordinary achievement and immense promise� (The New Yorker).
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: There are very few things I am more moved, saddened, and affected by than the early death of a promising artist. Basquiat, Heath Ledger, Anthony Veasna So, all dead from random bad luck. All gay guys (yeah, I said it about Legder, my gaydar goes DEFCON-5 every time I see him) who didn't get to finish their rough-edged bumptious growing processes. That is very much the feeling I had reading this collection of the gone-too-soon Author So's bits and bobs.
There's a kind of youthful arrogance, a judgment-passing superior smirk that shades into a sneer, in all the essays. It's to be expected, he was lionized early and often. He wasn't wrong, or wrong-headed; he was cocksure and unaware, in his youth, that being unsympathetic in your judgments doesn't make them stronger. In time perhaps that would've worn off, and he'd've reserved the sharpness of his eyes for more worthy opponents.
His fiction fragments in here point to an idea for a novel that could have turned into something interesting had he had time and some very good guidance. The fact is there was raw talent here, there was a Voice, and that loss is horrible. That it was down to self-destructive behaviors makes me think that the work we have now might have been all we ever got, living or dead. Many many addicted folk with powerful talents lose the war in themselves.
Not really recommended on its own; the reason to read it is that it feels like an act of mourning for what we all lost when he died of an overdose.
February 22, 2025
Ja teraz siedząca ze łzami w oczach w pociągu przez ostatni esej o samobójstwie jego przyjaciela 🥺
February 12, 2024
I read the last essay in this book in the best essays of 2022 and immediately knew that I wanted to read more of his work. This book, which includes various essays and excerpts from a book that he was working on before his death, was exactly what I wanted it to be! I even surprised myself by enjoying the fiction pieces in this book more than a lot of the non-fiction pieces which is quite unusual to my tastes. I found myself looking a lot of things up while reading this book. Learned lots about the genocide in Cambodia and various music artists he talks about. You should read this!
December 11, 2023
gifted by Ecco Books
SONGS is a collection of So's unfinished fiction, Straight Thru Cambotown, interspersed with previously published essays. With So's signature style blending cultural criticism and Cambodian diaspora with humor and sarcasm, both the fiction and essays left a strong impression on me.
In Straight Thru Cambotown, the readers follow three Cambodian-American cousins after the death of their aunt Ming Peou. Struggling to find their "place" in the world, each of the three characters converge in their hometown as Ming Peou's funeral takes place. I particularly love the emphasis on how it's up to Cambodian women to keep the community together, to pass down wisdom, and to raise the next generation—since the Cambodian genocide killed most (good) men.
So's essays are equally unique, thought-provoking, and insightful. Deep Reality examines how the new generation of reality TV repackages themselves as "woke" yet fails to promote meaningful changes because of the emphasis on being "nice/friendly/polite" and resolving complex issues into bite-sized episodes.
A Year in Reading follows So's ruminations of seeking literature that encourages dialogues and collaboration, instead of a one-sided narrative/lecture. It's a short but powerful essay that has me reexamining my relationship with literature and inspires me to seek out literature that will "radicalize" me.
So remembers his poet friend from grad school who died of suicide in Baby Yeah. With heartful & vulnerable writing, So takes the readers through all the messy feelings after a profound loss—grief, anger, and guilt, and reflects on his own mortality.
Per Jonathan Dee's foreword, SONGS is a reminder not of what could have been but what has already been achieved by a literary powerhouse like So. May he rest in power 🫶
SONGS is a collection of So's unfinished fiction, Straight Thru Cambotown, interspersed with previously published essays. With So's signature style blending cultural criticism and Cambodian diaspora with humor and sarcasm, both the fiction and essays left a strong impression on me.
In Straight Thru Cambotown, the readers follow three Cambodian-American cousins after the death of their aunt Ming Peou. Struggling to find their "place" in the world, each of the three characters converge in their hometown as Ming Peou's funeral takes place. I particularly love the emphasis on how it's up to Cambodian women to keep the community together, to pass down wisdom, and to raise the next generation—since the Cambodian genocide killed most (good) men.
So's essays are equally unique, thought-provoking, and insightful. Deep Reality examines how the new generation of reality TV repackages themselves as "woke" yet fails to promote meaningful changes because of the emphasis on being "nice/friendly/polite" and resolving complex issues into bite-sized episodes.
A Year in Reading follows So's ruminations of seeking literature that encourages dialogues and collaboration, instead of a one-sided narrative/lecture. It's a short but powerful essay that has me reexamining my relationship with literature and inspires me to seek out literature that will "radicalize" me.
So remembers his poet friend from grad school who died of suicide in Baby Yeah. With heartful & vulnerable writing, So takes the readers through all the messy feelings after a profound loss—grief, anger, and guilt, and reflects on his own mortality.
Per Jonathan Dee's foreword, SONGS is a reminder not of what could have been but what has already been achieved by a literary powerhouse like So. May he rest in power 🫶
January 25, 2024
This collection of 14 short stories and nonfiction essays showcase the brilliance of So.Ìý Some may call him smart; others would call him a smartass.Ìý He certainly is the former; and sometimes he's the latter too because of his delightfulÌýirreverence.Ìý He shows great insight about and great love of the characters and people who inhabit these pieces. His humor is wry, sharp, unflinching and yet, also generous and kind.ÌýÌý
As I read, like in , I sometimes thought about the stories, essays, and books he would have crafted.Ìý But reality led me to just be in the moment and enjoy what I held in my hands.Ìý His voice has this "come sit by me and I want to tell you something" quality.Ìý There's an intimacy...something revealed or disclosed.
Stockton features in almost all the 14 chapters.Ìý Seven of the 14 form an arc--around Ming ("aunt" in Khmer) Peou.Ìý It's an insider's peek into the Cambodian American community of Stockton in fictionalized form.ÌýÌý
In "Baby Yeah," So remembersÌýhis graduate school classmate who suicided.Ìý So is vulnerable in how he reflects on his friendship and his grieving. He is thoughtful in his pain...the loss empties him.
"A Year in Reading" recounts the many books So started but left unfinished.Ìý It is funny and forgiving (forgiving of self, importantly).Ìý
I enjoyed "Journey to a Land Free of White People" for its thorough skewering of Crazy Rich Asians (the movie and the book). This critique serves as an example of critical race theory and is unapologetic and funny.
"Duplex" features his family, his role in his family, and the quirky but successful way his father established a way of life for his family.Ìý It also shows how the Peou stories are so similar to So's life.ÌýÌý
So is adept in both fiction and nonfiction forms.Ìý I thoroughly enjoyed reading his writing and ingesting his "voice" in the process.Ìý And yes, I will miss what could have been but I will not dwell on it.
Several quotes:
In Cambotown, we are all the same--same stories, same history.Ìý Or lack thereof.
As anyone here, and they'll give you the same taglines. Early '70s is civilÌýwar and coup d'etat. Late '70s is Communist-style book burning, entire libraries up in flames, and killing fields ornamented with piles of skulls everywhere. Early '80s is refugee camps and immigration and adopting new names such as Steve, Bill, and Kathy, names we always forget to use, names we didn't realize were nicknames longer names such as Steven, William, and Catherine. Late '80s is overdosing on fresh-off-the-skillet perms, and gang wars with other gangs, mostly Hispanic. Early '90s is, okay, still gangs, but also small business owners and the American Dream of grocery stores that stock and restock fish sauce, while late '90s onward is PTSD symptoms passed down to kids like your moms' eyes and dad's bad karma and your dead Gong's fat head, or what sure looks like a fat head from the single surviving photo of him pre-genocide.
...We surrendered to the taglines, the shared sense of thinking--did that mind-boggling shit really happen? Oh, it did, it really did. Here's some coconut rice and a welfare check to make you feel better. Still, we're here, been here for years, and now we're sober of all that individualism bullshit. We're with you, have always been so. Let's be messed up Cambos together.
The library let us lose our selves...We spent afternoons flipping pages until one of parents reached the maximum amount of paid hours their jobs allowed.
By my prepubescence, it was clear that we had great academic futures, so our parents didn't need to worry. Nevertheless, satisfaction is foreign to their nature, and our parents soon recalibrated their concern to scrutinize our ignorance of the Khmer words and Cambodian customs we were forced to turn our backs on while studying at the school desk of American education. Instead of analyzingÌýchildren's literature, we listened to tales of the olden days in Cambodia. Instead of memorizing mathematical algorithms, we counted spoonfuls of whatever Cambodian dish flavored with fermented fish paste our parents tried acclimating us to that day.
...But for all the illegitimateÌýpractices and unnoteworthy profits, these enterprises still maintained an infinite longevity, a foolproofÌýbusiness plan: no amount of auditing would ever uncover any untaxed profits, as the paper trail left by any questionable merchandisingÌýconsisted of nothing more than the welfare checks stuffed into the mailbox each month. Government money flew into Manchester and never came out, like half the Cambodians living there.
Ìý ÌýEvery week was the same--the same junk foods, the same lesson plans, the same people. We played with the same grandchildren crawling around, unable to distinguish between baby noises and actual Khmer words.
The pain of diligent praying and the loss of hope for the present was the price for a better, reincarnated life.
...On Fridays, we compulsively checked the time until our parents came driving down the street. We would never leave right away, though. Our parents always started their weekends by walking deep into the apartment complex to chat with their old friends, reminiscing about exotic fruits found only in Cambodian memory.
But I couldn't get down with the way Kevin Kwan went about undermining the model minority myth.Ìý (Clearly, I wasn't one of the Asians discussed in an Atlantic article titled, "Why Asians Love 'Crazy Rich Asians.'")Ìý Kwan delights in dismantling stereotypes, but he doesn't have much aim or consistency, and his approach is zero-sum: anytime one character does something dynamic and unexpected, other characters get flattened into reductive caricatures.
Both winners were so conventional-looking that their total sum of remarkable features was net negative....
Queer Eye doesn't operate through forced spectacles.Ìý Instead, it seeks to deescalate the intensity of the political issues it raises by suffocating them with thoughtful niceness.
Ever since she first started working, laboring, clearing bowls of sloppy noodles as a child at her mother's kuy teav bar in the town market, Peou considered her real talent to be always knowing, to the finest degree, how much people owed her. Simply put, she held grudges. She was foreverÌýtallying up people's offenses to her personhood. And if this talent seemed like a gift with numbers, it was due to her understanding that all numbers were a simple, albeit flawed, system by which people understood and measured how things relate to one another, and wasn't all this measuring of relations itself just an elaborate scheme for figuring out debt? What we owe others? What others owe us?
At the time, Darren thought of comedy as philosophy. No matter how flippant, jokes had the potential of feeling comically true, as if the whole universe were to align and cohere when refracted through far-fetched premises, all skewered with enough absurdity to convey real clarity, ideas never before thought, radical understandings of the world.Ìý
With these difficulties came a lingering doubt that these traditions were worth keeping, a skepticism of whether anyone could actually remember with any accuracy what was and wasn't in line with true Khmer, true Buddhist, true Cambo-gangsta values, and a disbelief in the entire premise of reincarnation or karm in the face of Americanized teenagers who were taking AP Chemistry and Biology, who learned about scientific concepts, such as evolution and the laws of thermodynamics, on their way to becoming rational, educated member of U.S. society.Ìý
Still, I've always thought of total empathy as overrated. That it teaches one to care, sure, but never to build intimacy that accommodates for unknowability. At least not without bleaching nuance with bloated universal ideas.Plus, I try to not to befriendÌýthose who seek listeners and nothing else--not collaborators, not intellectual and cultural exchange--because I love dialogue!Ìý
He cracked nonstop jokes and laughed with everyone except those closest to him, such as his family, with whomÌýhe was so bitterly serious as to be himself a joke. He hated America but loved everything about being an American citizen.Ìý
(A note on Christianity in Cambotown: Back in the '80s, different Christian sects tried converting refugee families, offering social services and free stuff, including furniture, in an attempt to recruit more church members. Cambos being devoutly attached to their Buddhist roots--their stubborn worship of karma and reincarnation having endured French colonialism for decades--this evangelizing succeeded mostly in Cambo's taking advantage of poor Christian white folk, taking anything and everything they offered, before they returned to their own observances.)Ìý parenthesis So's
Three decades of deaths had hardened them to the scant parking, the claustrophobic side streets, the high density of bodies per square mile resulting from the largest Cambodian American population being crammed into one midsized section of one midsized Californian city. All this was a necessaryÌýfunction of their free lives. Their neighborhood encompassed an entire universe; naturally, there was no room for amply parking.
He saw the rippling of a communal anger, muted expressions of discomfort, the contorted wrinkles and gaping mouths that embellished the offended.
Ìý ÌýSometimes, Darren swore he could see the very creation of shared feelings, the binding of people into a culture, or a subculture, or even just a petty social clique. Usually, it was triggered by a transgression of the status quo...
Ìý ÌýBut if you can make your transgression potent enough, logical enough, and then heard and digested, acknowledged and reckoned with, you can cut straight through a group of people. You can reconfigure new affinities. That was the magic of comedy, the philosophical core....
Ìý ÌýDarren, for his part, hoped that whatever Peou (by way of Anchaly) had to say would not take up too much time, that it would be a closed loop, a direct route between what needed to be said and what needed to be done, with a final and foreseeable blessing of closure....
We lived off measly stipends and soggy pizza left over from department meetings. We taught undergrads we pitied in composition classes we hated, and we had an excessive tally of opinions that chafed our superiors.
...For weeks I carried within myself the desire to explode, to force a catharsis, but I remained too tired, too swollen with unexpressed impulses, to address my needs.
Ìý ÌýWhat is remembering other than revitalizing a corpse that will return to its grave? The memory always reaches a limit.Ìý Final frames of a reel that fade into depressing blankness. The more history you have with the deceased, the more endings you will suffer through.
RepetitionÌýallows for reinvention.
As I read, like in , I sometimes thought about the stories, essays, and books he would have crafted.Ìý But reality led me to just be in the moment and enjoy what I held in my hands.Ìý His voice has this "come sit by me and I want to tell you something" quality.Ìý There's an intimacy...something revealed or disclosed.
Stockton features in almost all the 14 chapters.Ìý Seven of the 14 form an arc--around Ming ("aunt" in Khmer) Peou.Ìý It's an insider's peek into the Cambodian American community of Stockton in fictionalized form.ÌýÌý
In "Baby Yeah," So remembersÌýhis graduate school classmate who suicided.Ìý So is vulnerable in how he reflects on his friendship and his grieving. He is thoughtful in his pain...the loss empties him.
"A Year in Reading" recounts the many books So started but left unfinished.Ìý It is funny and forgiving (forgiving of self, importantly).Ìý
I enjoyed "Journey to a Land Free of White People" for its thorough skewering of Crazy Rich Asians (the movie and the book). This critique serves as an example of critical race theory and is unapologetic and funny.
"Duplex" features his family, his role in his family, and the quirky but successful way his father established a way of life for his family.Ìý It also shows how the Peou stories are so similar to So's life.ÌýÌý
So is adept in both fiction and nonfiction forms.Ìý I thoroughly enjoyed reading his writing and ingesting his "voice" in the process.Ìý And yes, I will miss what could have been but I will not dwell on it.
Several quotes:
In Cambotown, we are all the same--same stories, same history.Ìý Or lack thereof.
As anyone here, and they'll give you the same taglines. Early '70s is civilÌýwar and coup d'etat. Late '70s is Communist-style book burning, entire libraries up in flames, and killing fields ornamented with piles of skulls everywhere. Early '80s is refugee camps and immigration and adopting new names such as Steve, Bill, and Kathy, names we always forget to use, names we didn't realize were nicknames longer names such as Steven, William, and Catherine. Late '80s is overdosing on fresh-off-the-skillet perms, and gang wars with other gangs, mostly Hispanic. Early '90s is, okay, still gangs, but also small business owners and the American Dream of grocery stores that stock and restock fish sauce, while late '90s onward is PTSD symptoms passed down to kids like your moms' eyes and dad's bad karma and your dead Gong's fat head, or what sure looks like a fat head from the single surviving photo of him pre-genocide.
...We surrendered to the taglines, the shared sense of thinking--did that mind-boggling shit really happen? Oh, it did, it really did. Here's some coconut rice and a welfare check to make you feel better. Still, we're here, been here for years, and now we're sober of all that individualism bullshit. We're with you, have always been so. Let's be messed up Cambos together.
The library let us lose our selves...We spent afternoons flipping pages until one of parents reached the maximum amount of paid hours their jobs allowed.
By my prepubescence, it was clear that we had great academic futures, so our parents didn't need to worry. Nevertheless, satisfaction is foreign to their nature, and our parents soon recalibrated their concern to scrutinize our ignorance of the Khmer words and Cambodian customs we were forced to turn our backs on while studying at the school desk of American education. Instead of analyzingÌýchildren's literature, we listened to tales of the olden days in Cambodia. Instead of memorizing mathematical algorithms, we counted spoonfuls of whatever Cambodian dish flavored with fermented fish paste our parents tried acclimating us to that day.
...But for all the illegitimateÌýpractices and unnoteworthy profits, these enterprises still maintained an infinite longevity, a foolproofÌýbusiness plan: no amount of auditing would ever uncover any untaxed profits, as the paper trail left by any questionable merchandisingÌýconsisted of nothing more than the welfare checks stuffed into the mailbox each month. Government money flew into Manchester and never came out, like half the Cambodians living there.
Ìý ÌýEvery week was the same--the same junk foods, the same lesson plans, the same people. We played with the same grandchildren crawling around, unable to distinguish between baby noises and actual Khmer words.
The pain of diligent praying and the loss of hope for the present was the price for a better, reincarnated life.
...On Fridays, we compulsively checked the time until our parents came driving down the street. We would never leave right away, though. Our parents always started their weekends by walking deep into the apartment complex to chat with their old friends, reminiscing about exotic fruits found only in Cambodian memory.
But I couldn't get down with the way Kevin Kwan went about undermining the model minority myth.Ìý (Clearly, I wasn't one of the Asians discussed in an Atlantic article titled, "Why Asians Love 'Crazy Rich Asians.'")Ìý Kwan delights in dismantling stereotypes, but he doesn't have much aim or consistency, and his approach is zero-sum: anytime one character does something dynamic and unexpected, other characters get flattened into reductive caricatures.
Both winners were so conventional-looking that their total sum of remarkable features was net negative....
Queer Eye doesn't operate through forced spectacles.Ìý Instead, it seeks to deescalate the intensity of the political issues it raises by suffocating them with thoughtful niceness.
Ever since she first started working, laboring, clearing bowls of sloppy noodles as a child at her mother's kuy teav bar in the town market, Peou considered her real talent to be always knowing, to the finest degree, how much people owed her. Simply put, she held grudges. She was foreverÌýtallying up people's offenses to her personhood. And if this talent seemed like a gift with numbers, it was due to her understanding that all numbers were a simple, albeit flawed, system by which people understood and measured how things relate to one another, and wasn't all this measuring of relations itself just an elaborate scheme for figuring out debt? What we owe others? What others owe us?
At the time, Darren thought of comedy as philosophy. No matter how flippant, jokes had the potential of feeling comically true, as if the whole universe were to align and cohere when refracted through far-fetched premises, all skewered with enough absurdity to convey real clarity, ideas never before thought, radical understandings of the world.Ìý
With these difficulties came a lingering doubt that these traditions were worth keeping, a skepticism of whether anyone could actually remember with any accuracy what was and wasn't in line with true Khmer, true Buddhist, true Cambo-gangsta values, and a disbelief in the entire premise of reincarnation or karm in the face of Americanized teenagers who were taking AP Chemistry and Biology, who learned about scientific concepts, such as evolution and the laws of thermodynamics, on their way to becoming rational, educated member of U.S. society.Ìý
Still, I've always thought of total empathy as overrated. That it teaches one to care, sure, but never to build intimacy that accommodates for unknowability. At least not without bleaching nuance with bloated universal ideas.Plus, I try to not to befriendÌýthose who seek listeners and nothing else--not collaborators, not intellectual and cultural exchange--because I love dialogue!Ìý
He cracked nonstop jokes and laughed with everyone except those closest to him, such as his family, with whomÌýhe was so bitterly serious as to be himself a joke. He hated America but loved everything about being an American citizen.Ìý
(A note on Christianity in Cambotown: Back in the '80s, different Christian sects tried converting refugee families, offering social services and free stuff, including furniture, in an attempt to recruit more church members. Cambos being devoutly attached to their Buddhist roots--their stubborn worship of karma and reincarnation having endured French colonialism for decades--this evangelizing succeeded mostly in Cambo's taking advantage of poor Christian white folk, taking anything and everything they offered, before they returned to their own observances.)Ìý parenthesis So's
Three decades of deaths had hardened them to the scant parking, the claustrophobic side streets, the high density of bodies per square mile resulting from the largest Cambodian American population being crammed into one midsized section of one midsized Californian city. All this was a necessaryÌýfunction of their free lives. Their neighborhood encompassed an entire universe; naturally, there was no room for amply parking.
He saw the rippling of a communal anger, muted expressions of discomfort, the contorted wrinkles and gaping mouths that embellished the offended.
Ìý ÌýSometimes, Darren swore he could see the very creation of shared feelings, the binding of people into a culture, or a subculture, or even just a petty social clique. Usually, it was triggered by a transgression of the status quo...
Ìý ÌýBut if you can make your transgression potent enough, logical enough, and then heard and digested, acknowledged and reckoned with, you can cut straight through a group of people. You can reconfigure new affinities. That was the magic of comedy, the philosophical core....
Ìý ÌýDarren, for his part, hoped that whatever Peou (by way of Anchaly) had to say would not take up too much time, that it would be a closed loop, a direct route between what needed to be said and what needed to be done, with a final and foreseeable blessing of closure....
We lived off measly stipends and soggy pizza left over from department meetings. We taught undergrads we pitied in composition classes we hated, and we had an excessive tally of opinions that chafed our superiors.
...For weeks I carried within myself the desire to explode, to force a catharsis, but I remained too tired, too swollen with unexpressed impulses, to address my needs.
Ìý ÌýWhat is remembering other than revitalizing a corpse that will return to its grave? The memory always reaches a limit.Ìý Final frames of a reel that fade into depressing blankness. The more history you have with the deceased, the more endings you will suffer through.
RepetitionÌýallows for reinvention.
November 12, 2023
every time that i am reminded of the fact that anthony veasna so no longer breathes among us i am devastated anew. he amazes me every time i read something he has written; it's not just talent, vision, craft…it's soul. i don't think anyone could replicate what he did in , and i am crushed that he never got the chance to finish straight thru cambotown. but i'll take what i can get, and what he has given us in this collection, carefully pieced together by those who knew his work the best, is marvelous and astounding.
rest in peace. rest in power.
thanks to ecco for the arc in exchange for an honest review
rest in peace. rest in power.
thanks to ecco for the arc in exchange for an honest review
November 20, 2023
5 stars
Fans of Anthony Veasna So will get exactly what they hope for here: more. The reality of this book is tragic: that our access to this writer's great works is limited because his life and his writing life, more specifically, were so short. Fortunately, that doesn't impact the quality of what we do get, and that is an array of previously published non-fiction and, most thrillingly, excerpts from what obviously would have been a tremendous novel.
Readers should come into this experience expecting snippets versus a finished piece. I will continue to savor every word, and I'm so glad we got a few more here.
*Special thanks to NetGalley and ECCO for this arc, which I received in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.
Fans of Anthony Veasna So will get exactly what they hope for here: more. The reality of this book is tragic: that our access to this writer's great works is limited because his life and his writing life, more specifically, were so short. Fortunately, that doesn't impact the quality of what we do get, and that is an array of previously published non-fiction and, most thrillingly, excerpts from what obviously would have been a tremendous novel.
Readers should come into this experience expecting snippets versus a finished piece. I will continue to savor every word, and I'm so glad we got a few more here.
*Special thanks to NetGalley and ECCO for this arc, which I received in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.
June 7, 2024
Rip to a great writer...saying goodbye to him with his unfinished novel felt cathartic
On the essays: deep reality is so well written and thought out!!! I have been been thinking about it before i encountered the essay, and i am glad i encountered it!!! Also baby yea was the perfect essay to end it with!
Maybe later more academic thoughts on the incomplete work? Curious on ephemeral drafts being sold to publishing companies?? Idk academic thoughts but wanna relish in the pure experience of it for now :)
On the essays: deep reality is so well written and thought out!!! I have been been thinking about it before i encountered the essay, and i am glad i encountered it!!! Also baby yea was the perfect essay to end it with!
Maybe later more academic thoughts on the incomplete work? Curious on ephemeral drafts being sold to publishing companies?? Idk academic thoughts but wanna relish in the pure experience of it for now :)
July 13, 2024
After Afterparties, I knew I had to read the rest of So’s available writing. Here is my review of it:
We Are All The Same Here, Us Cambos: 4/5
FICTION
Ahhh there’s that distinctive voice I loved so much in Afterparties!!!
So really characterizes his Cambodian-American community so well.
This extract was too short to really get a hold of how it would have functioned in the wider novel though. And I am sad that that novel (Straight Thru Cambotown) is now left unfinished due to So’s untimely death�
I guess the non-fictional message then is just� don’t do drugs? And *especially* don’t mix drugs, not with other drugs and not with alcohol.
Manchester Street: 4/5
NON FICTION
Oh wow. I see where So’s mastery of the collective voice in his fiction comes from now. This was another excellent portrait of Cambodian America (specifically the titular Manchester Street). I only wish it had dug a little more into class/class mobility and how exactly he and his cousins made friends with the Manchester kids � what were those relationships like? How different did their life trajectories in the end turn out to be? What’s Manchester Street like now? Did So ever go back as an adult? Etc etc
Journey to a Land Free of White People: 1/5
NON FICTION
Way too much of this essay felt like it was just summarizing the plot of Crazy Rich Asians. Basically the number one thing English teachers tell you not to do in an essay.
Also, Crazy Rich Asians as a movie was okay entertaining but mostly mid. Like, I don’t really feel that there’s that much to analyze in the movie itself (although this essay tries). And honestly, it’s only such a massive huge breakthrough for Asian representation if the only movies you watch are American/Western.
Past generations really were deprived of Asia Asian media. These days, every boy band teen girls swoon over is Korean, every cartoon is anime, and white children speak better Mandarin than I do.
In conclusion: Soft power is the real mover and shaker, and Crazy Rich Asians is still an average movie. Good soundtrack tho.
Deep Reality: 2/5
NON FICTION
I just didn’t find So’s commentary on reality TV as a genre all that enlightening. It’s all been written before. I think this essay would’ve been better focused just on Queer Eye, which So does have some interesting thoughts on.
But this essay overall is just so boring, omg. He just says over and over “they’re trying too hard to be woke and it’s fake� and they are and it is but� so what??? Everyone who’s ever watched contemporary reality TV knows this.
Also, why the shade to Sex Education in a throwaway sentence! That show is good! (Excluding season 4 and maybe a good chunk of season 3.) And Sex Education is not reality TV. It’s an emotionally resonant work of teen fiction TV. And some of the best of its genre! Unlike this boring essay, unfortunately.
Peou and Her Kmouys: 5/5
FICTION
Oof finally, after two banal essays, we’re back to the fiction I love so much from So.
Love love loved this character portrait of an aunt.
Darren and Vinny: 5/5
FICTION
I never thought I could be so invested in some guy wondering if his cousin is bisexual, lol.
So is just so incredibly good at crafting characters who feel like real people, and relate to each other as real people do... I have read few settings as startlingly specific as So’s Cambodian American communities and neighborhoods.
I can see a few clumsy areas here that might’ve been edited in the finished novel, where conversations end or start or segue into one another awkwardly, and characters abruptly move themselves from scene to scene for convenience’s sake. But still. Just brilliant. Another amazing excerpt.
A Note on the History of Cambotown Funerals: 5/5
FICTION
Wow that was actually really informative and also drummed up even more mystery for me as to who the “I� narrator of Straight Thru Cambotown is. A nebulous cousin, I assume, allowing for the use of the close “we� while also allowing the rest of the narration to shift into comfortable close third?
Molly (and Peou): 3/5
FICTION
Ah, unfortunately I just don’t find Molly as interesting as her cousins.
Also her specific guilt over Peou’s death felt a bit odd? Like? She feels bad for being useless and unemployed and also for turning down a job with Peou but� as she literally said herself� Peou’s job is illegal! And probably going to become defunct sooner or later in her generation. So it would’ve been just another bad decision to take that “job?� I think she should’ve had another different specific thing to feel bad over, honestly.
Like maybe she did take up that job but then she had an argument with Peou while working, you know?
Some things also felt too random and not built up to, like the Lort Guy’s mom shutting them out so that we could have the cathartic tree climbing sequence.
The feminist eulogy ending also honestly felt� unearned, in part because we hadn’t really delved into gender as a theme or Peou as a feminist icon before the eulogy.
Duplex: 4/5
NONFICTION
Okay, it’s the travails of an art student and his father.
Would’ve been more compelling if I could’ve actually seen the art instead of just reading hyperspecific descriptions of So’s art process.
But I liked this one.
It was cool to hear about art art, the meaning and making of it from the artist’s perspective.
A Year in Reading: 3/5
NONFICTION
Basically So’s summary of his Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ Wrapped.
I like reading reviews of books I haven’t read, but this rapid-fire overview of many, many books I haven’t read didn’t end up offering much for me. Would’ve been better as a list of book recommendations.
At least I’ve now got more books to add to my bottomless to-read pile.
The Roses: 4/5
FICTION
It’s Vinny and Molly’s dad! And his uh masculinity issues. And his justified frustration at his going-nowhere kids lol. Well, maybe Vinny’s possibly-bisexual rapping is going somewhere.
Wow, we really changed up perspectives here. I love how So really gives a fictional voice to all the members of “Cambotown�? Like, the irreverent grown kids might curse out their parents, but we’re going to get to see from the parents� perspective too. It’s a great mastery of POV.
However, nothing much happened in this extract.
But still. I really really want to try Cambodian food now.
The Cousins at the Funeral: 4/5
FICTION
Okay this is meant to be a climactic-ish scene with the return of the Lort Guy and more reveals of who the first person narrator is (nebulous cousin conducting interviews and “writing the book� in-universe?). But the first draft holes were showing a little more in this section and it definitely wasn’t as smooth as earlier extracts.
Still very good, though. And I wish the real full book existed. And I knew that Molly’s eulogy was gonna piss people off lol.
Dinner with the Core Family: 3/5
FICTION
The mystery of the man in the Dodgers cap is solved, ish?
Honestly, with these later extracts I think I really am feeling the unfinished-ness/first draft-ness bleed through. This isn’t as polished as the fiction from Afterparties.
All the building blocks are still there though... I can see how the real plot would have unfolded. And it would’ve been so great.
Also, the bisexual cousin thing comes back here and I loved it lol.
Baby Yeah: 5/5
NONFICTION
An essay about grief to end a posthumous book. Poignant placement.
And well placed, too. It’s so good. It’s a stunning testament to a human relationship. And yeah, I played all the songs mentioned while reading. It really was something to hear the words in the air and in my mind, the lyrics and the writing.
Overall: 4/5
The mid essays dragged the rating down, sorry.
But 5 stars for the Straight Thru Cambotown excerpts. That book would’ve been a banger. It would have been my best book of the year I read it. It would probably have become my favorite book� ever.
So yeah, I do mourn the fact that book will never be finished because So has passed away. But it feels silly to pretend I, random stranger who enjoyed Afterparties, has any real stake in the life and death of a very real person.
All I can do in that regard is refer to an excellent Vulture article on So, his family and partner, and the aftermath of his death.
We Are All The Same Here, Us Cambos: 4/5
FICTION
Ahhh there’s that distinctive voice I loved so much in Afterparties!!!
So really characterizes his Cambodian-American community so well.
This extract was too short to really get a hold of how it would have functioned in the wider novel though. And I am sad that that novel (Straight Thru Cambotown) is now left unfinished due to So’s untimely death�
I guess the non-fictional message then is just� don’t do drugs? And *especially* don’t mix drugs, not with other drugs and not with alcohol.
Manchester Street: 4/5
NON FICTION
Oh wow. I see where So’s mastery of the collective voice in his fiction comes from now. This was another excellent portrait of Cambodian America (specifically the titular Manchester Street). I only wish it had dug a little more into class/class mobility and how exactly he and his cousins made friends with the Manchester kids � what were those relationships like? How different did their life trajectories in the end turn out to be? What’s Manchester Street like now? Did So ever go back as an adult? Etc etc
Journey to a Land Free of White People: 1/5
NON FICTION
Way too much of this essay felt like it was just summarizing the plot of Crazy Rich Asians. Basically the number one thing English teachers tell you not to do in an essay.
Also, Crazy Rich Asians as a movie was okay entertaining but mostly mid. Like, I don’t really feel that there’s that much to analyze in the movie itself (although this essay tries). And honestly, it’s only such a massive huge breakthrough for Asian representation if the only movies you watch are American/Western.
Past generations really were deprived of Asia Asian media. These days, every boy band teen girls swoon over is Korean, every cartoon is anime, and white children speak better Mandarin than I do.
In conclusion: Soft power is the real mover and shaker, and Crazy Rich Asians is still an average movie. Good soundtrack tho.
Deep Reality: 2/5
NON FICTION
I just didn’t find So’s commentary on reality TV as a genre all that enlightening. It’s all been written before. I think this essay would’ve been better focused just on Queer Eye, which So does have some interesting thoughts on.
But this essay overall is just so boring, omg. He just says over and over “they’re trying too hard to be woke and it’s fake� and they are and it is but� so what??? Everyone who’s ever watched contemporary reality TV knows this.
Also, why the shade to Sex Education in a throwaway sentence! That show is good! (Excluding season 4 and maybe a good chunk of season 3.) And Sex Education is not reality TV. It’s an emotionally resonant work of teen fiction TV. And some of the best of its genre! Unlike this boring essay, unfortunately.
Peou and Her Kmouys: 5/5
FICTION
Oof finally, after two banal essays, we’re back to the fiction I love so much from So.
Love love loved this character portrait of an aunt.
Darren and Vinny: 5/5
FICTION
I never thought I could be so invested in some guy wondering if his cousin is bisexual, lol.
So is just so incredibly good at crafting characters who feel like real people, and relate to each other as real people do... I have read few settings as startlingly specific as So’s Cambodian American communities and neighborhoods.
I can see a few clumsy areas here that might’ve been edited in the finished novel, where conversations end or start or segue into one another awkwardly, and characters abruptly move themselves from scene to scene for convenience’s sake. But still. Just brilliant. Another amazing excerpt.
A Note on the History of Cambotown Funerals: 5/5
FICTION
Wow that was actually really informative and also drummed up even more mystery for me as to who the “I� narrator of Straight Thru Cambotown is. A nebulous cousin, I assume, allowing for the use of the close “we� while also allowing the rest of the narration to shift into comfortable close third?
Molly (and Peou): 3/5
FICTION
Ah, unfortunately I just don’t find Molly as interesting as her cousins.
Also her specific guilt over Peou’s death felt a bit odd? Like? She feels bad for being useless and unemployed and also for turning down a job with Peou but� as she literally said herself� Peou’s job is illegal! And probably going to become defunct sooner or later in her generation. So it would’ve been just another bad decision to take that “job?� I think she should’ve had another different specific thing to feel bad over, honestly.
Like maybe she did take up that job but then she had an argument with Peou while working, you know?
Some things also felt too random and not built up to, like the Lort Guy’s mom shutting them out so that we could have the cathartic tree climbing sequence.
The feminist eulogy ending also honestly felt� unearned, in part because we hadn’t really delved into gender as a theme or Peou as a feminist icon before the eulogy.
Duplex: 4/5
NONFICTION
Okay, it’s the travails of an art student and his father.
Would’ve been more compelling if I could’ve actually seen the art instead of just reading hyperspecific descriptions of So’s art process.
But I liked this one.
It was cool to hear about art art, the meaning and making of it from the artist’s perspective.
A Year in Reading: 3/5
NONFICTION
Basically So’s summary of his Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ Wrapped.
I like reading reviews of books I haven’t read, but this rapid-fire overview of many, many books I haven’t read didn’t end up offering much for me. Would’ve been better as a list of book recommendations.
At least I’ve now got more books to add to my bottomless to-read pile.
The Roses: 4/5
FICTION
It’s Vinny and Molly’s dad! And his uh masculinity issues. And his justified frustration at his going-nowhere kids lol. Well, maybe Vinny’s possibly-bisexual rapping is going somewhere.
Wow, we really changed up perspectives here. I love how So really gives a fictional voice to all the members of “Cambotown�? Like, the irreverent grown kids might curse out their parents, but we’re going to get to see from the parents� perspective too. It’s a great mastery of POV.
However, nothing much happened in this extract.
But still. I really really want to try Cambodian food now.
The Cousins at the Funeral: 4/5
FICTION
Okay this is meant to be a climactic-ish scene with the return of the Lort Guy and more reveals of who the first person narrator is (nebulous cousin conducting interviews and “writing the book� in-universe?). But the first draft holes were showing a little more in this section and it definitely wasn’t as smooth as earlier extracts.
Still very good, though. And I wish the real full book existed. And I knew that Molly’s eulogy was gonna piss people off lol.
Dinner with the Core Family: 3/5
FICTION
The mystery of the man in the Dodgers cap is solved, ish?
Honestly, with these later extracts I think I really am feeling the unfinished-ness/first draft-ness bleed through. This isn’t as polished as the fiction from Afterparties.
All the building blocks are still there though... I can see how the real plot would have unfolded. And it would’ve been so great.
Also, the bisexual cousin thing comes back here and I loved it lol.
Baby Yeah: 5/5
NONFICTION
An essay about grief to end a posthumous book. Poignant placement.
And well placed, too. It’s so good. It’s a stunning testament to a human relationship. And yeah, I played all the songs mentioned while reading. It really was something to hear the words in the air and in my mind, the lyrics and the writing.
Overall: 4/5
The mid essays dragged the rating down, sorry.
But 5 stars for the Straight Thru Cambotown excerpts. That book would’ve been a banger. It would have been my best book of the year I read it. It would probably have become my favorite book� ever.
So yeah, I do mourn the fact that book will never be finished because So has passed away. But it feels silly to pretend I, random stranger who enjoyed Afterparties, has any real stake in the life and death of a very real person.
All I can do in that regard is refer to an excellent Vulture article on So, his family and partner, and the aftermath of his death.
December 30, 2023
3.5 stars. I loved the last essay
February 21, 2024
I actually really enjoyed the fiction pieces, but the essays were not for me
November 22, 2023
This is a posthumous collection of essays and outtakes composed of fiction and nonfiction pieces.
Anthony feeds us with much needed Cambo culture, which fiction and nonfiction are equally prominent (although, personally, my taste leans towards nonfiction in this case). Cambodian community have always been here, not with the same stories unlike many people assume. Through Anthony's words, one can't help but witness people's attempt to grasp hidden hope, pushing to make all the sacrifices worthwhile. The cultural barrier and the process of assimilation intersect with grief and longing, converging with one's own feelings in a way that makes this a hard read at times.
While the meditation on queerness, whiteness, capitalism and pop culture gives a bolder nature, Anthony counterweights with a more tender examination of family. The critical take on Crazy Rich Asians is, in the end, when one yearns to feel at home. In “Baby Yeah�, Anthony’s thoughts (and pain) in the aftermath of his friend’s suicide made me heavily reflect on life. There's so much compassion, which each word is deeply meaningful.
Anthony's exquisite writing leaves one speechless. SONGS ON ENDLESS REPEAT is a timeless work of a brilliant young writer that will impress readers in different ways. Now I feel the urge to read Afterparties!
[ I received an ARC from the publisher - Ecco books . All opinions are my own ]
Anthony feeds us with much needed Cambo culture, which fiction and nonfiction are equally prominent (although, personally, my taste leans towards nonfiction in this case). Cambodian community have always been here, not with the same stories unlike many people assume. Through Anthony's words, one can't help but witness people's attempt to grasp hidden hope, pushing to make all the sacrifices worthwhile. The cultural barrier and the process of assimilation intersect with grief and longing, converging with one's own feelings in a way that makes this a hard read at times.
While the meditation on queerness, whiteness, capitalism and pop culture gives a bolder nature, Anthony counterweights with a more tender examination of family. The critical take on Crazy Rich Asians is, in the end, when one yearns to feel at home. In “Baby Yeah�, Anthony’s thoughts (and pain) in the aftermath of his friend’s suicide made me heavily reflect on life. There's so much compassion, which each word is deeply meaningful.
Anthony's exquisite writing leaves one speechless. SONGS ON ENDLESS REPEAT is a timeless work of a brilliant young writer that will impress readers in different ways. Now I feel the urge to read Afterparties!
[ I received an ARC from the publisher - Ecco books . All opinions are my own ]
Read
June 20, 2024As I've gotten older I've tried to become less of a contrarian. When I was younger it was kind of punk and forgivable, but as a man pushing 50, currently wearing shorts, argyle socks, and a t-shirt I got for free from work, glasses perched on the edge of my nose so I can read the words I'm typing, is there any relevance to my having a negative opinion on, say, Billie Eilish? No. It's just crotchety.
But I haven't been able to totally kill my contrarian impulses. Which means I felt a little sheepish when I added my small review to all the praise for Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So. I was excited to check out Songs on Endless Repeat, a posthumous collection of essays and chapters from his unfinished novel. It's ok, but it doesn't hold up next to Afterparties. The novel definitely feels unfinished - I feel like I'm missing some through lines. His essay on reality TV was my favorite, maybe because it allowed me some vicarious contrarianism.
But I haven't been able to totally kill my contrarian impulses. Which means I felt a little sheepish when I added my small review to all the praise for Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So. I was excited to check out Songs on Endless Repeat, a posthumous collection of essays and chapters from his unfinished novel. It's ok, but it doesn't hold up next to Afterparties. The novel definitely feels unfinished - I feel like I'm missing some through lines. His essay on reality TV was my favorite, maybe because it allowed me some vicarious contrarianism.
August 20, 2024
This is the second book of essays and short stories by this author, and it may be his last. Anthony Veasna So passed away in 2020 from a drug overdose. His two books focus on life as a descendent of Cambodian immigrants. His first book focused on Cambo life, as he called it, and his life as a gay man. This book focuses more on his family life, traditions, and the death of the matriarch. Anthony was a very talented writer, and I enjoyed reading about his culture. I would have given it 5 stars, but I found it a bit slow for me. The content; however, is worth 5 stars.
January 7, 2024
This work is half essays previously published elsewhere and half bits of a novel So never had the opportunity to complete. Like most posthumous works, it feels a bit like a money grab (for a publisher who was promised two books) and makes me wonder if So is cringing at parts from the great beyond. All that to say, I loved the essays! The chopped up pieces of the novel I liked less but have no doubt they would have been an excellent book.
December 30, 2023
I’m grateful to have read this, but devastated anew that we’ll never see new work from Anthony Veasna So. That these brilliant excerpts from Straight Thru Cambotown will never be a fully formed novel the way he intended. The same vibrance that made the stories in Afterparties so engaging is definitely present here. And while his nonfiction writing is still excellent, the highlight for me was definitely these story excerpts, which felt so rich and real, even in the brief moments I got to spend with Darren, Vinny, and Molly. S fitting tribute to the work of a writer gone far, far too soon.
January 2, 2024
oh man I really loved this; I liked afterparties but I really loved the nonfiction in this collection. so glad straight thru cambotown is in here bc the parts we get to read really shine. special highlight for “a year in reading� but everything was excellent
January 7, 2024
Liked this very much. I read all the fiction back to back, first; it’s almost all from one incomplete novel. I’m sorry we won’t ever learn more about that story
Then I read the nonfiction all together, too, and I liked it even more
Then I read the nonfiction all together, too, and I liked it even more
February 5, 2024
Glad to have one more peace of work from this author, and enjoyed this quite a bit. The almost-complete novel is mixed in with some of his nonfiction essays, and while I enjoyed both, the fiction felt stronger to me. Would recommend.
December 31, 2023
the perfect reflective note to end off the year
January 10, 2024
endlessly in love with the words so left behind and all the ones unwritten too
February 23, 2025
i would have loved to have been able to read cambowtown in its entirety :,)
Read
January 30, 2024It was bittersweet reading this, knowing it's the last book by Anthony Veasna So I'll ever read. It also hits different reading one of the final essays in the book about (tw: suicide) knowing that he would then a year or two later.
I found the inclusion of both nonfiction essays and chapters of short stories (which seemed to be pieces of a planned, full novel) fresh and unique. I don't think I've ever read a book that blended fiction and nonfiction before and each time I thought I preferred the essays, the short story chapters would sneak up on me with their prowess.
The essays in this were insightful and full of Veasna So's sharp, brilliant analysis. He was so perceptive in his critique of racism and US culture, and it's easy to tell from both Afterparties and this that he had a brilliant mind. The loss I feel, knowing we'll never get more work from him, is vast.
I found the inclusion of both nonfiction essays and chapters of short stories (which seemed to be pieces of a planned, full novel) fresh and unique. I don't think I've ever read a book that blended fiction and nonfiction before and each time I thought I preferred the essays, the short story chapters would sneak up on me with their prowess.
The essays in this were insightful and full of Veasna So's sharp, brilliant analysis. He was so perceptive in his critique of racism and US culture, and it's easy to tell from both Afterparties and this that he had a brilliant mind. The loss I feel, knowing we'll never get more work from him, is vast.
December 30, 2023
Amazing book by an amazing author. Rest in power.
February 22, 2024
Devoured this on a flight - both the fiction and nonfiction parts hit home for me
Read
December 5, 2023This book by the late Anthony Veasna So caught my eye for his essays on family, queer desire, and race. Don’t be tempted to skip over the fiction chapters from his unpublished novel sprinkled between essays. I was surprised to find they contained some of the most real writing I’ve encountered on the intersection of sexual orientation and family. (Specifically, check out the chapter titled “Darren and Vinny.") Thank you to NetGalley and Ecco for the opportunity to read in exchange for an honest review. I'm glad I picked up something different than I’m used to reading.
January 4, 2024
What makes Anthony Veasna So’s essays so special to me is his unique viewpoint as a gay cambodian-american man. (He pokes fun at there being few known cambodians in one of the stories saying he has no other famous cambodian to look up to, other than Angelina Jolie’s adopted son Maddox. (He’s overlooking Francois Chau here, but I’ll let that slide.)) His humor disarms and coaxes us in.
He loses me in his “hot take� about crazy rich asians where he starts deconstructing and hating everything about it before ending with it accepting that the movie does the bare minimum for asians. From there it’s downhill for me, with negatively loaded commentary on Queer eye, and other reality shows. Rants that might work in conversation, but in a one way forum, are overbearing. But again, these commentaries are collected from old clippings, so they might not be right for this time, even if they were right for that time.
This collection of essays and other outtakes are published posthumously.. Based on his own commentary, I’m not sure he would have wanted this collection published, he might have viewed it as exploitative and without reason.
He loses me in his “hot take� about crazy rich asians where he starts deconstructing and hating everything about it before ending with it accepting that the movie does the bare minimum for asians. From there it’s downhill for me, with negatively loaded commentary on Queer eye, and other reality shows. Rants that might work in conversation, but in a one way forum, are overbearing. But again, these commentaries are collected from old clippings, so they might not be right for this time, even if they were right for that time.
This collection of essays and other outtakes are published posthumously.. Based on his own commentary, I’m not sure he would have wanted this collection published, he might have viewed it as exploitative and without reason.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 110 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.