I've been interested in the work of Ocean Vuong since I moved near his childhood hometown of Hartford, Conn., a few years ago. But I've only just begun listening to interviews he's given (mainly about his novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous), and I find the way he speaks is mesmerizing.
Both the substance of what he is saying and the way he says it summons my full attention.
He's one of those people about whom it could be said, "He's old beyond his years."
What incredible fortitude -- his childhood after leaving Vietnam and coming to America wasn't easy -- and also incredible grace. Not to mention a certain acumen for dispensing with silly literary distinctions; when asked about how he blends poetry with prose, he says something like, "I am an apprentice of the sentence." As if to say, in the end, words and sentences, which convey human thought and emotion, are key, regardless of the configuration.
I love that!
Below are three interviews I could consume over and over again. The one from the NPR program "On Being" also comes in an extended version (~90 minutes). Here's the link:
https://onbeing.org/programs/ocean-vuong-a-life-worthy-of-our-breath/
He talks at length in this interview about the struggles of immigrants in America, saying that immigrant parents give their children these instructions: "Work, fade away, get your meals and live a quiet life."
He adds, "That's the great crisis of the first and second generation."
The "conundrum," he says, for the second generation is this: "They want to be seen -- they want to make something. And what a better way to make something ... than to be an artist."
Then he makes this devastating observation, "So many of us immigrant children end up betraying our parents in order to subversively achieve our parents' dreams."
I don't know if I am hearing right, but it sounds as though his voice breaks as he says this (his voice conveys emotion a lot and it's hard to know sometimes if he's on the verge of tears or just simply that's his voice, and for me, that's part of why it mesmerizes me). Either way, what a bold, heartbreaking and profound statement about one particular iteration of the parent-child saga.
And here's one Connecticut Public Radio's Colin McEnroe conducted:
https://www.wnpr.org/post/conversation-ocean-vuong-1
Lastly, from Christiane Amanpour's show on PBS:
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