Podcast Summary: All Of It – Ocean Vuong’s Novel ‘Emperor of Gladness’

Date: December 29, 2025
Host: Alison Stewart, WNYC
Guest: Ocean Vuong, author and poet

Episode Overview

In this episode of All Of It, host Alison Stewart discusses Ocean Vuong’s acclaimed second novel, Emperor of Gladness, set in the post-industrial fictional town of East Gladness, Connecticut. The conversation delves into Vuong’s personal inspirations for the novel, themes of survival, community, memory, and the everyday acts of kindness that make life meaningful. Vuong reflects on his own experiences as both a caretaker and immigrant, and reads from the novel, offering listeners insight into the emotional landscape of his protagonist, Hai.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Origins of Hai’s Crisis

• Why does Hai contemplate suicide?

  • Vuong describes how suicidality is often not about a grand, dramatic reason but rather the slow exhaustion of options and hope.
  • Quote:
    “Sometimes we lose steam. And for me, I wanted this character to also arrive when things run out of options rather than some sort of absolute sadness.” (Ocean Vuong, 01:44)
  • Inspired by Vuong’s own family history, particularly his uncle’s suicide:
    “In his letter... he said something to the extent of 'I just had enough of it,' as if he was pushing something away. That really struck me.” (Ocean Vuong, 01:54)

• Exploring survival beyond crisis

  • Vuong is interested in what happens after someone chooses not to die—what living day-to-day looks like after such a turning point.
  • Quote:
    "I'm interested in what happens on day two, day three, day 20. A question that I never really got to ask my uncle because that's a really vexed place to have no hope." (Ocean Vuong, 02:36)

2. Grisina: The Unexpected Lifeline

• Character description and inspiration

  • Grisina is a Lithuanian survivor of WWII and Stalinism, now elderly and fighting dementia. She becomes the catalyst for Hai’s recovery through their unlikely caregiving relationship.
  • Quote:
    "A survivor, a quintessential American, having fled Stalin in World War II and arrived in America...Meeting Hai, who survived the Vietnam War...America is a layered place of war." (Ocean Vuong, 03:15)
  • Grisina is directly based on a real woman Vuong cared for in his college years, infusing the novel with lived experience.
    "Gergina Versalis was an incredible person who I lived with while I was studying at Brooklyn College. ...I tended to her needs. Experiencing frontal lobe dementia." (Ocean Vuong, 04:17)

• Lessons from caregiving

  • Living with someone with dementia shaped Ocean's approach to fiction and empathy, teaching him to “follow her reality” and respect her unique world.
  • Quote:
    "Living with someone with chronic mental illness, you have to follow their reality. And it became actually a really foundational lesson in fiction to me because I realized that she was inventing in and remembering all at once." (Ocean Vuong, 04:56)

3. Themes of Shame, Belonging & Community Kindness

• Why is Hai hesitant to accept help?

  • Due to internalized shame and the feeling of being undeserving, particularly for marginalized people.
  • Quote:
    "For so many folks who are on the margins of society, there is so much inherent shame about where we should belong... Why would a stranger let me have a place to live and stay?" (Ocean Vuong, 06:01)

• Transforming purpose through service

  • The narrative centers not on a heroic arc but on small, often unnoticed acts of care—for others and oneself.
  • "He could be more useful to her than he was ever useful to himself. ...maybe that is an accretion of the will to live, rather than a big central thesis that we so hunger for in this culture." (Ocean Vuong, 06:40)

• Being needed as a reason to go on

  • Quote:
    "Your place is actually forgetting that you were at the end of your rope because you’re at the beginning of someone’s need." (Ocean Vuong, 07:20)
  • Explores the notion: What do we owe each other, and how do we exhibit immense kindness without hope?

4. Place as Character: East Gladness

• Why extensive description of the town?

  • Contrasts the advice to “grab the reader” with instead immersing them in place—since environment forms people’s lives and stories.
  • Quote:
    "To me, place is meaning. The place that we grow up is the plot. It makes us who we are. It will determine how we talk to each other, how we value each other, and how we understand the world." (Ocean Vuong, 12:04)

• Pacing of the narrative

  • Deliberately spends seven pages on “a town with no people, no action” to let setting itself become central.

5. Books, Language, and Intergenerational Gaps

• What do books mean to Hai (and Ocean)?

  • Books are both a source of pride and pain: pride for being able to read and write, grief because it’s inaccessible for some immigrant parents.
  • Quote:
    "My own mother would see me read and be filled with grief. ...She saw me read and realized that that ship has sailed for her." (Ocean Vuong, 13:33)
  • The act of reading is intimate, sometimes private, and a bridge between worlds.

• Language as connection

  • Quote:
    "With language, as is happening right now, we go all the way through with words. There is no other medium in our species where we can go all the way through except with sound." (Ocean Vuong, 14:43)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On survival:
  “Sometimes we lose steam. ...I wanted this character to also arrive when things run out of options.” (01:44)
• On intergenerational trauma:
  "America is a layered place of war. These folks are ejected from geopolitical ruptures, and yet they find each other in the same room." (03:15)
• On empathy learned from caregiving:
  “She was inventing in and remembering all at once...who am I to say that her reality was any less real than mine?” (04:56)
• On community:
  “A community is an extension of a kind of webbed kinship.” (06:26)
• On small acts:
  “It’s the small instances, the small moments...You move forward until you realize you have a place.” (07:17–07:20)
• On books in immigrant families:
  “I stopped reading in front of her. It felt like a kind of mocking. I started to read much more privately.” (13:44)
• On language:
  “With language, as is happening right now, we go all the way through with words...” (14:43)

Important Timestamps

• [01:44] – On the everyday reality of despair, not grand tragedy
• [03:15] – Introducing Grisina, personal and historical inspiration
• [04:17] – Vuong’s real-life caregiving experience and its effect on writing
• [06:01] – Hai’s internalized shame and offer of help
• [07:20] – The philosophical core: moving past one’s own crisis by becoming necessary to someone else
• [10:34] – Vuong’s reading from the novel: Hai’s backstory, family immigration, and struggles
• [12:04] – The role of setting and place in the novel
• [13:44] – On the complexity of reading in an immigrant family
• [14:43] – Language as the deepest mode of connection

Conclusion

Ocean Vuong’s conversation on All Of It is a candid, moving exploration of life on the margin—spanning trauma, the meaning of small acts, and the lifelong quest for belonging and kindness. Through intimate anecdote and philosophical reflection, Vuong extends the novel’s themes beyond the book, inviting listeners into a deeper consideration of what we owe each other—and the power of “moving forward until you realize you have a place.”