Songs on Endless Repeat: Essays and Outtakes

The late Cambodian American writer So (Afterparties) deeply probes the tension between trauma and comedy in this second posthumous collection of “essays and outtakes,” drawn from his experiences as a gay man and second-generation immigrant in Southern California. This work deftly combines So’s previously published nonfiction pieces on topics such as Crazy Rich Asians and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy with excerpts from his unpublished novel Straight Thru Cambotown, which was left unfinished upon his death in 2020 at age 28. His prose brilliantly rages—with humor, frustration, youthfulness, embarrassment, loathing, and sorrow—at the invisible traps and tragedies that define the human condition. For So, these emotional cycles are the heart of both grief and laughter, a contradiction that leans comic in “Manchester Street,” with scenes from his immigrant upbringing, and collapses into devastation with the concluding essay “Baby Yeah,” in which a friend’s death by suicide results in a song played over and over to evoke his absence. With the foreword written by So’s adviser, Jonathan Dee, and well-paced, thoughtful narration performed by Keong Sim.