‘My open eye’: Souvankham Thammavongsa, Anthony Veasna So and short fiction as minor literature

Abstract

From the 1980s to the 2000s, contemporary world fiction gained increasing prominence through the maximalist form of the postcolonial novel. More recently, short story collections with postcolonial themes, realist styles and minimalist constraints have gained in prominence, even as patterns of migration entangle the categories of local and global. This article focuses on two recent and acclaimed books, How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa, and Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So, in order to argue that these reflexive, humorous and polyvocal collections provide new and generative iterations of contemporary global fiction through the form of the short story.