With new novel, Ocean Vuong says he wants to reframe America as a place of salvage

Summary

NPR's Book of the Day: Detailed Summary

Episode Title: With new novel, Ocean Vuong says he wants to reframe America as a place of salvage
Release Date: May 23, 2025
Host: NPR
Guest: Ocean Vuong, Author of The Emperor of Gladness

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Introduction to Ocean Vuong and His New Novel

NPR's Andrew Limbong opens the episode by introducing Ocean Vuong, a celebrated writer known for his acclaimed debut novel, On Earth, We're Briefly Gorgeous. Vuong's latest work, The Emperor of Gladness, delves into the life of a 19-year-old boy named Hai who forms an unlikely friendship with an 82-year-old woman suffering from dementia, inspired by Vuong's own experiences.

Notable Quote:

"It's something patriotic about today's interview," - Andrew Limbong (00:02)

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Reframing the American Narrative

Host Ari Shapiro explores Vuong's intent to redefine the concept of America not as a land of unchecked opportunity but as a space where individuals salvage their lives amidst chaos and debris.

Key Insights:

• Shared Heritage of Survival: Both main characters, Hai and Gerjina, share histories of fleeing wars—Stalin's regime and the Vietnam War respectively—highlighting resilience as a core American trait.
• Salvage and Renewal: Vuong emphasizes that America is a place where people can reconstruct their lives from the remnants of past traumas.

Notable Quote:

"I want to reframe America as not just this place of opportunity, but a place where things can be salvaged through debris." - Ocean Vuong (02:30)

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Personal Experiences Shaping the Narrative

Vuong shares his personal journey, detailing how caring for his grandmother with dementia influenced the novel's emotional depth and themes of isolation and connection across generations.

Key Points:

• Isolation of the Marginalized: Both the youth and the elderly are portrayed as isolated figures, marginalized by society yet finding common ground in their loneliness.
• Human Connections Beyond Differences: The bond between Hai and Gerjina transcends racial and cultural divides, illustrating the universal need for companionship and understanding.

Notable Quote:

"I found out that living with her, I was more useful to her than I was ever to myself." - Ocean Vuong (04:36)

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Exploring Beauty in Ugliness

The conversation delves into Vuong's artistic philosophy of infusing beauty into harsh and unappealing subjects, a technique that adds depth and resilience to his storytelling.

Key Insights:

• Epistemology of Wonder: Inspired by his illiterate yet wondrously imaginative family, Vuong uses descriptive language to highlight the potential for beauty in all aspects of life.
• Buddhist Ethos: His writing embodies the belief that nothing is irredeemable, finding salvageable potential even in the most grotesque elements.

Notable Quote:

"Nothing is irredeemable. Even the ugly, the worst above us, have potential to be salvaged." - Ocean Vuong (07:15)

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Portrayal of Fast Food Workers as Dreamers

Vuong shifts focus to the depiction of fast food workers in The Emperor of Gladness, presenting them as dreamers and survival artists rather than mere laborers.

Key Points:

• Humanizing Service Workers: By showcasing the personal lives and dreams of fast food employees, Vuong challenges stereotypes and emphasizes individual stories.
• Shared Humanity: Working in a fast-paced environment fosters a unique kinship among workers, breaking down ideological barriers through mutual reliance.

Notable Quote:

"Americans who dream... there is no monolith to this place that we live in." - Ocean Vuong (10:59)

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Humor Amidst Struggle

The novel balances its profound themes with moments of humor, illustrating how laughter serves as a coping mechanism in the face of adversity.

Key Insights:

• Survival Through Humor: Vuong believes that humor is essential to endure the harsh realities of life, especially in confined and challenging environments like a fast food restaurant.
• Innovative Relationships: Building relationships through humor allows characters to navigate and survive their difficult circumstances together.

Notable Quote:

"I think you realize that you have to laugh in order to not cry." - Ocean Vuong (13:49)

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Conclusion and Final Thoughts

The episode concludes with Vuong reflecting on the profound impact of human relationships over ideological differences and the importance of salvage and renewal in crafting a nuanced American identity.

Final Notable Quote:

"Human relationships will always outpace ideological polemics." - Ocean Vuong (13:30)

NPR's Book of the Day successfully captures the essence of Ocean Vuong's The Emperor of Gladness, offering listeners a comprehensive understanding of the novel's themes, character dynamics, and Vuong's literary philosophy.

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Production Credits:
Produced by Chloe Weiner, Edited by Meghan Sullivan
Founding Editor: Petra Mayer
Executive Producer: Hansa Yolanda Sanguini

Podcast Elements Produced and Edited By:
Martha Ann Overland, Michael Radcliffe, Martin Patience, Mark Navin, Thomas Danielian, Melissa Gray, Elena Toric, Matt Ozig, and Alejandra Marquez.

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For more book recommendations and literary insights, subscribe to NPR's Book of the Day newsletter at npr.org.

Transcript

[Andrew Limbong]

Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. There's something patriotic about today's interview. It's with the writer Ocean Vuong, who's got a new novel titled the Emperor of Gladness. It's about a 19 year old boy who befriends an elderly woman with dementia, something that happened to Vuong himself. And it's not as if this book is rah rah American jingoism. It's not that kind of patriotism. But instead, in this interview with NPR's Ari Shapiro, Vuong hits on the almost ineffable essence that binds us all as Americans. That's ahead.

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[Ari Shapiro]

And poet Ocean Vuong sits among an elite sliver of celebrated US Writers. His debut novel, on Earth, We're Briefly Gorgeous, won a bunch of awards. In 2019, he got a MacArthur Fellowship. Known as a genius graduate, he's on faculty at nyu. All of that is very different from the environment where he grew up, raised by working class Vietnamese immigrants in Hartford, Connecticut, a place a lot like the post industrial town of East Gladness where his latest novel is set. Here's how Ocean Vuong describes it early in his new book, the Emperor of Gladness.

[Ocean Vuong]

It's a town where high school kids, having nowhere to go on Friday nights, park their stepfather's trucks in the unlit edges of the Walmart parking lot, drinking Smirnoff out of Poland Spring bottles and blasting Weezer and Lil Wayne until they look down one night to find a baby in their arms and realize they're 30 something and the Walmart hasn't changed except for its logo, brighter now, lending a bluish glow to their time gaunt faces.

[Ari Shapiro]

The novel centers on an unlikely friendship between a 19 year old college dropout named Hai and an 82 year old with dementia named Grujina. Ocean Vuong told me the two have something important in common.

[Ocean Vuong]

Well, I think in many ways we throw around the phrase quintessential America and we can say it's the White picket fence. It's the American dream. But what I actually thought, looking at these two people, was that they both come from war. Gerzina flees Stalin in World War II. Hai and his family fled the war in Vietnam. And there's nothing more quintessentially American than to have two strangers who survive two wars 30 years apart meet and actually share this sort of shared bond of survival. And to me, I want to reframe America as. As not just this place of opportunity, but a place where things can be salvaged through debris. Both Hai and Gerzina are debris ejected from two horrifying geopolitical ruptures. But they are not trash. They are not garbage. They are debris that has picked themself up and created a new life.

[Ari Shapiro]

The last page of this book says, in Memory of Grgina J. Versalis, 1925-2014. And reading that suddenly threw the rest of the novel into a different kind of context for me. I was dying to know, who is she? Who is this other Grijina?

[Ocean Vuong]

She was an incredible woman who I managed to live with. As I was going through college, I dropped out of Pace University and I lost my housing. And when I signed up to study at Brooklyn College, I got in, but I didn't have housing. Eventually, a friend of mine basically said, my grandmother is living alone, and if you go and live with her and just take care of her, you have a room. And I didn't know what I was getting into. I was 19. I thought taking care of just meant being there. But, boy, you know, right away I learned words like dementia. Words like aricept, you know, that's a.

[Ari Shapiro]

Word I don't know.

[Ocean Vuong]

Yeah, it's a medication for dementia. And I realize in this country, both the young and the very old have been pushed on the margins. The young have been deemed inadequate. They don't have the means or the assets to contribute properly to American progress. And the old have been deemed defunct. They are outside of their working, productive years. And the common ground between the 40, 50 years between us was that we were both completely isolated. And the immense loneliness of the very young and the very old was actually a binding, beautiful moment for us. And I would sit there watching the Price Is Right with her as if I was sitting with my grandmother. And it really changed what I. What I thought human interactions and human potential could be, because it really wasn't about our racial differences or our cultural ones. It was about necessity. I found out that living with her, I was more useful to her than I was ever to myself. And it changed how I considered my role as an artist, as a person, and it was really important.

[Ari Shapiro]

Do you want to take a moment?

[Ocean Vuong]

Yeah. Thank you so much.

[Ari Shapiro]

Yeah, of course. Take your time. Do you want a drink of water?

[Ocean Vuong]

Yeah. Thank you so much.

[Ari Shapiro]

The first time these two characters meet, Hai tells Gergina, my dream was to write a novel that held everything I loved, including unlovable things. Is that also your dream? Is that what this novel is?

[Ocean Vuong]

Yes, absolutely. Growing up in Hartford, my family and I came from Vietnam. We didn't have a lot of English, and we were living in one bedroom apartment on government assistance, sponsored by the Salvation army, bless their hearts. And we were invited into the Baptist church. And that's where I first encountered the myth of Noah's Ark. And I thought it was real. As a 7, 8 year old, I said, my goodness, what a life. To build something and put everything into it that would survive an apocalypse. What would I put? And to me, it's the beautiful things and the ugly things that will then teach us how to be and how to learn from each other.

[Ari Shapiro]

In this book, there are so many moments where ugly things are happening, and they are described in a beautiful way. Whether it is a pig slaughterhouse or a character who's in recovery, relapses, and you write, he was warm as a blood cell being swept through the vein of a fallen angel. Finally good. Is there a kind of, I don't know, power or even radicalism in bringing beauty to ugliness, to the unlovable, things, to scenes even of horror?

[Ocean Vuong]

I think so. And in this sense, I have to credit the women who raised me. I was raised by my grandmother and my mother, my aunts, all of whom were illiterate, but they were not without the capacity for wonder. And I think when you have so little to give your children, as they did as refugees, they gave me the capacity to understand wonder. There is an epistemology to understanding and learning how to be befuddled and at awe of the world at once. And so to me, that became really technique and craft. The challenge is, can you look at the world long enough to worship the potential of it? And I think language is really interesting because how you describe something reveals who you are. Description is DNA. And so the more we describe the world, the more we actually share our values, our perspectives. And I think there is a kind of Buddhist ethos to. What I believe in, in my description, is that nothing is irredeemable. Even the ugly, the worst above us, have potential to be salvaged. And to me, the sentence perhaps is the most capacious medium for that effort.

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[Andrew Limbong]

Going to keep going with this interview between Ocean Vuong and Ari Shapiro, because that essence I mentioned at the top, it extends out beyond the two main characters in this book. Here's Ari again.

[Ari Shapiro]

In his new novel, the Emperor of Gladness, Ocean Vuong describes characters who work together in a Connecticut fast food restaurant as people bound by nothing but toil.

[Ocean Vuong]

In a tiny kitchen that was never truly a kitchen, paid just above minimum wage, their presence known to each other mostly through muscle memory, the shape of their bodies ingrained in the psyche from hours of periphery, maneuvering through the narrow counters and back rooms of a fast food joint designed by a corporate architect so that they would come to know the sound of each other's coughs and exhales better than those of their kin and loved ones.

[Ari Shapiro]

Vuong worked in fast food, and the Emperor of Gladness is partly a love letter to these workers.

[Ocean Vuong]

I think they are Americans who dream. You know, I think I'm more interested in Americans who dream than I am in the American dream. Because when you reframe that, you reframe the American dream as something around Americans who dream, you get to see them as individuals and you realize there is no monolith to this place that we live in. It's so large, most of us don't even really know how other parts of us live. But when you look at people who work in a fast food restaurant, you realize that no matter how different their ideologies are, and there were vastly different ideologies where I worked, kinetic kinship degrades and corrodes those ideologies. It's really hard to hate somebody when you need them to finish the shift with you. When you start to see them sweat in the third or fourth hour and you see the sweat glistening on the locket that they have around their neck, how it opens to the picture of their grandmother, who they love dearly. It made a big impact on me as a person to know that human relationships will always outpace ideological polemics.

[Ari Shapiro]

You know, my grandfather made my mother work in a factory for a summer because he wanted her to have that experience, which to me always seemed a little cruel. And you're making me see it in a different light, that there may have been a gift he gave her beyond the knowledge of hard, repetitive work that goes to what you're describing right now.

[Ocean Vuong]

Yes. I think. You know, I can't speak for your grandfather, but I think you realize that everything you do has a price. It has a cost. Every action you take, you know, fast food workers, their humanity is often obfuscated. They are valued only for their hands, what they can do with their hands. But they are some of the most. I've seen some of the greatest problem solving and innovation in a fast food restaurant. I've seen a chicken thigh taped to a freezer to keep it open. You know, again, it's like, I'll never forget it. And it's like, that's a perfect way to solve that because there was nothing else that would keep it open, just enough so we can go in and out. And to me, these are. They're survival artists.

[Ari Shapiro]

You're reminding me to mention that this book also has a tremendous sense of humor. There are moments that made me laugh out loud in the midst of the beauty and the pain and the epic sweep of these individual lives. There are just absurd, hilarious sequences.

[Ocean Vuong]

I think you realize that you have to laugh in order to not cry. And I think when you know that you're going into this little box of a restaurant and you're going to be with six or seven people for the next eight hours, it's almost like a sonnet, you know, the sonnet has been accredited to being one of the most innovative forms of Anglophonic poetry because of its restrictions it demands. You can't veer too far, so you have to innovate inward. And that's what the shift was to me, is that I knew that I could not turn away from these people, regardless of how I feel about them. So I needed to build a relationship that would help us survive. And part of that is humor. You know, the immense amount of humor and the absurdity of living the modern life and showcasing that freely with how we got through some of those brutal, brutal shifts.

[Ari Shapiro]

Ocean Vuong's new novel is the Emperor of Gladness. Thank you so much.

[Ocean Vuong]

Thank you so much, Ari. It's an honor.

[Andrew Limbong]

And that's it for this week on NPR's Book of the Day. If you want more, you can sign up for our [e-mail] Newsletter Books I'm Andrew Limbaugh. The podcast is produced by Chloe Weiner and edited by Meghan Sullivan. Our founding editor is Petra Mayer. The show elements for this week were produced and edited by Martha Ann Overland, Michael Radcliffe, Martin Patience, Mark Navin, Thomas Danielian, Melissa Gray, Elena Toric, Matt Ozig, and Alejandra Marquez. Hansa Yolanda Sanguini is our executive producer.

[Ocean Vuong]

Thanks for listening.

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