Afterparties

"When my sister and I were kids, my dad would drive us every Sunday morning to our local Cambodian doughnut shop whether we felt like it or not, encumbered by lazy mornings. The women in “Three Women of Chuck’s Donuts,” the first short story in Anthony Veasna So’s Afterparties, are trapped in the same haze, although theirs is a nightly journey and they work on the other side of the counter. This is a book that examines refugee stories and touches on themes of generational rumination and cultural introspection, focusing on memory. At its fulcrum is a doughnut shop that separates So’s characters from the Cambodia they remember and the America they’ve come to understand. They’re all carrying baggage, and are often enduring – trying to make sense of repressed feelings. As memories go, it is a prison, but also a refuge. These stories, to me, are a reminder of those mornings when my dad drove us to the doughnut shop, mornings that have become just a memory we lived through – a short story memorialized only by a box of doughnuts."

"radically new and hilarious."