"The Shop" by Anthony Veasna So

1.5.22

A self-portrait using Southeast Asian stamps

I don’t know why I didn’t think about how hard it was going to be to reread “The Shop” and write about Anthony, but it’s hard. Anthony Veasna So’s book of short stories was released last August, over half a year after his death. The year before, he’d graduated with an MFA from Syracuse University.

I met Anthony in autumn 2017, when he and his cohort began the MFA program, of which I was a part. The program is three years long. I was in my third year, managing drama in my own cohort and beginning to disconnect from the program, but I connected with Anthony and many of the writers in his cohort— so many of them were kind, funny, and warm; something I felt had been lacking in the program as a whole since my admittance. The program at Syracuse is a prestigious one, and while I was there (and in the years before I was admitted, when I was an undergrad at Syracuse) I always sensed an undercurrent of competition and cliquishness, which at times I m…