What theme does each of the stories in the collection, Afterparties, have in common?

Throughout the entirety of his collection, the author explores the entanglement between self-discovery and the individual's relationship with his familial, ancestral, and cultural past. All of the characters in So's short stories are Cambodian children, adolescents, or young adults struggling to reconcile the truth of their parents' trauma with their current lives in America. Though the main characters in Afterparties are all second generation, their understandings of themselves are deeply impacted by their parents' experiences during the Cambodian genocide.