Faculty Resources

Orientation Book - Summer 2024

On behalf of the Orientation Book Committee, we are delighted to announce that we’ve chosen Anthony Veasna So’s Afterparties  for this academic year. 

About Afterparties: A posthumously published collection of short stories by a young Cambodian American fiction writer, Afterparties is a tour de force constellation of coming-of-age stories set within a Central Valley community of refugees and their children grappling with the intergenerational trauma of genocide. At turns startling, sad, affirming, and funny, the stories in Afterparties invite their readers to think about race and sexuality across friendships, families, and communities

Please email cswim@pomona.edu if you have not received your copy of the book. 

Join us July 29-Aug 4 for a book club-style discussion with fellow freshmen, co-led by current Pomona students!

Pick a time or join more than one. Each conversation will feature a different chapter. RSVPs greatly appreciated here.

Zoom link (tentative--please return before your session for the most updated link)

Chapter overviews

Superking Son Strikes Again: Superking Son, a once-lauded local and state athletic star, is now overshadowed by the mundane responsibilities of running his family’s Superking grocery store in a Cambodian immigrant community in the Central Valley of California. Sinking into depression as he deals with exotic fruit imports and the stench of raw meats day in and day out, he still manages to command the respect of the neighborhood residents, despite his harsh demeanor, menial job, and rapidly-aging body. Superking son remains a revered badminton coach for the local Cambo boys, that is until a young, hotshot rival enters the picture and complicates the scene, bringing out intergenerational tensions and traumas and challenging the bit of glory to which he has desperately been clinging. Who will win a high-stakes badminton game that pits old and new sports heroes against each other and what does the outcome mean for the younger generation of Cambos sorting out their identities in their multicultural community?

Maly, Maly, Maly: Maly, the high school-aged daughter of “an immigrant woman who just couldn’t beat her memories of the genocide”, has a complicated relationship with Ma Eng, the great aunt who raised her from a young age after her mother’s death. As Ma Eng and other community elders prepare for a ceremony honoring Maly’s mom’s reincarnation in a recently-born family member, Maly and her cousin and confidant, Ves, escape the confusing family and cultural dynamics for a bit, hiding out and getting high in their uncle’s video rental store. Musing about the ways media has helped raise and enculturate them while also violating their minds and reminiscing about a Thai horror film about a vengeful ghost mother that they watched together as kids, Ves hallucinates, beginning to reconcile his struggles with his hometown, his queerness, and the cousins’ relationship to tradition and trauma as he gets ready to leave for a solitary college life in LA. Maly, who will be left behind in Central California, suddenly feels compelled to meet this baby who supposedly bears her mom’s soul (a character who will return in a later chapter as a nurse caring for Ma Eng on her deathbed in a nursing home.)

The Shop: After graduating from college, a directionless narrator returns home to his dad's struggling car repair shop to pass the time as he waits for the next thing in life. He both admires and finds himself frustrated by the sacrificial way his father tries to support and employ so many Cambodian community members and refuses to charge customers full price for the work, despite the toll it takes on him and the family. As everyone is making expensive preparations to welcome a monk whose blessing is hoped could turn around the shop’s financial prospects, we meet a colorful range of community members similarly caught in stasis around the store, juggling family and relationship priorities and strains while feeling pressure to figure out what comes next.

Background resources

History and political context

Learn about the Cambodian genocide and the history behind the wave of Cambodian immigration to the US

• Pol Pot: The World's Most Murderous Dictator (10 min)
• Ugly History: The Khmer Rouge (6 min)

Cambodian arts and culture

Read Cambodian poetry (more here once you have library.claremont.edu)

Instagram account of the Longbeach, CA Cambodian Performing Arts Center

Khmer Classical Dance: YouTube videos

• Cambodia's first LGBTQ dance company 
• The magic of Khmer classical dance: “The Khmer word for art means ‘magic’... the artist, then, is nothing short of a magician!”
• The 1000-year-old Dance Tradition the Khmer Rouge Nearly Killed

Khmer Original Music movement

• Cambodian-American artist Laura Mam
• "How a music revolution changed the Cambodian narrative"

Interviews with the author’s family and friends, podcast clips, and other articles

“A Young Literary Star Makes His Posthumous Debut with ‘Afterparties’”: National Public Radio tribute to Anthony Veasna So

"Before my Boyfriend Died Suddenly, We Were Two Writers in Love": BuzzFeed piece by Alex Torrez, Anthony's partner

“A Bittersweet Triumph for a Fresh Voice Silenced Too Soon”: posthumous Fresh Air clip about the author

“A Rising Star’s Career was Cut Short”: New York Times article about So's death

"Straight through Cambo Town" So reading an excerpt from his new book

Good Reads Virtual Book Club discussion of Afterparties (Stockton-San Joaquin Public Library, includes an overview of each chapter of the book)

“Conversations with Authors” Panel discussion

• Host: Nick Mitchell.
• Samantha So Lamb, Anthony’s sister
• Alex Torrez, Anthony’s partner and the moderator
• Mira Jacob, novelist, memoirist, and So's former professor
• Monica Sok, Stanford grad and friend of Anthony’s, who taught poetry to SE Asian refugee youth together with him
• Brian Washington, creative writer and multi-award winner whom Anthony admired

Documentaries and films

Donut King documentary (trailer): Of the 5,000 independent donut shops in California, 90% are owned by Cambodian Americans. This compelling documentary explores why and tells the immigrant story (with a glazed twist!) of Ted Ngoy, a pioneer of Cambodian American entrepreneurship who sponsored hundreds of Cambodian refugee families and built a donut empire. 

• Inside Edition (3.5 min overview of the documentary): 
• BBC article about Ted Ngoy

The Killing Fields film (trailer): 3-time Academy Award-winning film

More about the book from the 2023-24 first-year class president, 

Diane Nguyen:

Dear Incoming Sagehens, 

My name is Diane Nguyen from Hanoi, Vietnam. As the current first-year Class President, I am thrilled to welcome you to Pomona College and I am excited to introduce you to the Orientation Book Program, which was a memorable part of my own first year experience.

This year, after much deliberation and review of many worthy contenders, we have selected Afterparties: stories (2021) by Anthony Veasna So. This brilliant collection delves into the lives of Cambodian Americans, offering a vivid exploration of their experiences. The stories adeptly mix light-hearted moments with significant reflections on themes such as race, sexuality, friendship, and family—each narrative underlined by the historical echoes of the Khmer Rouge past. George Saunders captured it best, noting that the stories in Afterparties, “powered by So’s skill with the telling detail, are like beams of wry, affectionate light, falling from different directions on a complicated, struggling, beloved American community."

Our goal with the Orientation Book Program is not only to select a book that we feel will resonate with you but also to cultivate a special culture of reading. By placing a single book at the center of our collective attention, we are eager to facilitate community conversations and immerse students in the intellectual life of the college—one in which books and discussions transcend the classroom. You will discuss Afterparties in a variety of contexts: with your sponsor groups, on OA trips, during orientation seminars, at community events throughout the Fall semester, and at our campus writing center, now known as the Center for Speaking, Writing, and the Image (CSWIM). At the CSWIM, you will meet with trained academic partners who are not only eager to delve with you into this year's book but also to help you develop your own voice as you transition to writing, reading, and speaking, throughout your broader journey at Pomona.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, even though I admittedly squeezed it in during finals week! The narrative style deeply immersed me and allowed me to connect with the emotions, situations, and thoughts of characters across various stories. I was particularly moved by how themes like friendship, family, love, individuality, and sexuality are intricately woven into beautiful and evocative narratives. One of my favorite stories, "Superking Son Scores Again," revisits the past glories of a badminton coach's youth. I found each story in the collection compelling, and I hope you do too!

Enjoy your reading, and I look forward to meeting you soon!

Warmest regards,

Diane Nguyen ‘27

All incoming students with a permanent U.S. address should have received a copy of the book in the mail. Students living abroad will receive access to a digital copy but can claim a physical book when they arrive on campus in August.

2023-2024 Orientation Book Committee

Colleen Rosenfeld, associate professor of English, committee chair

Malte Dold, assistant professor of economics

Thomas Flaherty, John P. and Magdalena R. Dexter Professor of Music

M. Bilal Nasir, assistant professor of Asian American studies

Sara K. Olson, associate professor of biology

Frederike von Schwerin-High, professor of German and Russian

Josh Eisenberg, associate dean of students/dean of campus life

Diane Nguyen '27

Materials and resources for faculty currently teaching ID1 are available on the "ID1 Resources" site on Sakai. If you are not currently teaching ID1, but would like access to these materials, please email the Writing Program.

Additional Resources

1. No One Writes Alone: Peer Review in the Classroom (MIT)
2. Teaching with Writing [PDF] by Kerry Walk
3. Crafting Effective Writing Assignments (Duke University Thompson Writing Program)
4. In-Class [Writing] Activities (Yale Center for Writing Instruction)

If you are interested in a consultation about teaching writing in ID1 or any other class, please contact Jenny Thomas, Director of College Writing.

If you think that a student would benefit from additional writing support, please email the CSWIM about the Regular Writing Partners program, or direct them to our email.