Ocean Vuong on Class, Grief, and When He Plans To Call It Quits| Fresh Air

Описание: Ocean Vuong’s new novel, The Emperor of Gladness, unfolds in a quiet Connecticut town, where a 19-year-old struggling with addiction and an 82-year-old widow drifting through dementia form an unexpected and tender bond. What begins as a chance connection becomes a meditation on survival, chosen family, and the fragility of memory.
But this conversation goes far beyond the novel.
In this interview:
• The emotional landscape of The Emperor of Gladness
• What Ocean learned about hope, faith, and kindness working in fast food
• How grief and language shaped Ocean’s identity
• How writers like Toni Morrison led the way
• Why teaching offers more freedom than publishing
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Fresh Air Instagram: @nprfreshair
Tonya Mosley Instagram: @tonyatalks
Hope Wilson, Consulting Visual Producer
Molly Seavy-Nesper, Digital Media Producer
Walid Azami, Director of Photography
Enrico Benjamin, Original music
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Chapters:

0:00 Ocean's death meditation practice
00:30 Why Ocean was nervous about the reception of his latest book
04:37 Who Ocean is writing for
07:40 Ocean reads from The Emperor of Gladness
12:21 What Ocean learned working at Boston Market and Panera Bread
13:58 The limitations of the sonnet
18:57 The choice to live and find meaning in the mundane everyday experiences
25:10 Hope embedded in kindness
26:42 The strangeness of class mobility
31:50 Value Systems
36:08 “In this next life…” Ocean’s mother’s haunting last words before death
41:17 Ocean’s relationship to happiness
41:28 Freedom within to write
48:10 The critique of being “earnest”