Summer Online Book Club Meet-Ups led by current Pomona students

After a relatively civil divorce, Cambodian-American mother, Sothy, finds herself the owner of “Chucks Doughnuts” in suburban Stockton, Central California. Pushing pastries all day, Sothy wonders how it is possible that her hands are as worn as her mother’s, who suffered under a genocidal regime. When an unknown man comes into the store several nights in a row to sit at a booth, staring out the window and leaving apple fritters uneaten, Sothy’s two teenage daughters, who work late night shifts with their mom during their summer break, take notice; especially when Sothy remarks, “of course he's Khmer [Cambodian].” Just what is being Khmer and why do they recognize him as such with only a few cursory words spoken between them? The question preoccupies Tevy, 16 years old, and working on a paper about identity for a philosophy course at the local community college. She makes a plan to interview him while her mom is away from the shop, confident his answers will earn her an A. Alarmingly, the man bears a striking resemblance to Sothy’s ex-husband. She agonizes about whether they're related, acutely aware of a debt hanging over their heads from her mobster brother-in-law, who was involved with the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime back in Cambodia. The women of Chuck’s Donuts may not know this somber man's backstory, but they “know this man. We’ve carried him our whole lives.”

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.

Serey, a second-generation Cambodian-American, works as a nurse in a hospice for terminally ill elders. She has been assigned to the care of her great-aunt, Ma Eng, who lost her neice, Somaly, to death by suicide, prompted by inescapable memories of the Cambodian genocide. As a newborn, Serey was determined by the local monks to possess the reincarnated soul of her relative, leading to a complicated relationship with Somaly’s adult daughter, Maly. Haunted by her family’s beliefs and a conflicted sense of identity, Serey considers passing along a pendant that she inherited from Ma Eng, which belonged to Somaly and seems filled with her trauma, causing recurring nightmares. All she hopes for is liberation, and with Ma Eng on her deathbed, she sees a chance to seize it. When Maly comes to visit the bedside with her own children, Serey considers passing along the pendant with its heavy memories of the ghost to one of Maly's kids. Can she escape the generational curse of her family’s trauma?