I KEPT THINKING of Anthony Veasna So's Afterparties as I read this, for all sorts of admittedly superficial reasons. As in So's book, the narrative voice of most of these stories is echt Young American Male in vocabulary, sensibility, and preoccupations, but, again as with So's book, these young American males have parents whose lives were burned and bent by historical traumas that turned them into refugees in a country they do not much understand and never much wanted to be. The circumstances of So's Cambodian refugees in California do differ from those of Kochai's Afghani in California, certainly--they differ religiously, for one thing, and in the amount contact they have with family back in the old country, and in the role U.S. policy played in what happened back home. Nonetheless, it's easy to imagine any algorithm leading you to the one book soon leading you to the other.
One difference: Kochai sometimes veers towards magical realism. The basic frame for each story is realistic, but events occur that border on the supernatural from a post-Enlightenment perspective, although within the realm of the possible from a more traditional perspective. These events usually have to do with the dead. There's a bit of a spiritual tingle.
Another: Kochai likes to play with form a bit more than So did. For instance, we have a story here that adopts the format of video game instructions, another that is a take on the form of the job résumé. Surprisingly enough, even though the form of both stories is somewhat experimental, they were the most revealing and the most moving of the book.
Kochai did not get the National Book Award, I see, but I hope just being nominated wins the book some of the attention it deserves.
No comments:
Post a Comment