Lee Levine was kind enough to draw my attention to this 2022 Guardian interview with Ocean Vuong, two of whose books we've discussed in the past few years: On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous and Night Sky with Exit Wounds. As Lee notes, there are some obvious parallels between Vuong and Anthony Veansa So, whose Afterparties short story collection we began reading last week. The two writers are both gay Asians who knew each other, were just four years apart in age, and hailed from adjacent countries with overpowering historical legacies. Both men used drugs, but Vuong survived his addiction; So, alas, did not.
And during our discussion of Afterparties, conducted via Zoom, Mike Mazza shared a link to this previously unreleased interview with Anthony Veansa So. Unlike the author, we know that he would die just a few months later from a drug overdose, which gives his words an elegiac quality. I found this quote particularly telling: "I'm very drawn to thinking about how people can be saved from the logical extension of trauma: death, essentially. The idea that because of trauma, because of the past, life could become unbearable for someone, and the future could seem like a non-option. So how do you actually strive forward into the future? How do you help people do that? That's what I mean by saving, to be blunt. I think writing can be part of this, insofar as it's a reimagining of what different paths people could follow and be shaped by and saved by. In some sense, I guess I want reading to save people."
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