Ocean Vuong: "The Emperor Of Gladness" | Oprah's Book Club

In this episode of Oprah’s Book Club: Presented by Starbucks, Oprah sits down with acclaimed author Ocean Vuong to discuss his much-anticipated new novel, The Emperor of Gladness. Chosen as the 114th Oprah’s Book Club selection, The Emperor of Gladness reveals the many ways love, labor and loneliness show up in American life. The novel begins on a summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, where nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge ready to jump. An elderly widow suffering from dementia intervenes and the unlikely pair form a life-altering bond. In this episode, Ocean discusses this deeply personal narrative and his gift of illuminating the fullness of humanity in the most ordinary of places. Oprah and Ocean are joined by a live audience in a Starbucks Café in Chicago, enjoying the Iced Brown Sugar Oatmilk Shaken Espresso, layered with flavors of brown sugar, cinnamon and Starbucks® Blonde Espresso Roast. BUY THE BOOK! The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong https://amzn.to/4wLsKQm ⁠https://open.spotify.com/episode/50VqT29k6PQqGQzUnenogD https://open.spotify.com/episode/50VqT29k6PQqGQzUnenogD Follow Oprah Winfrey on Social: Instagram https://www.instagram.com/oprah/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/oprahwinfrey TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@oprah?lang=en Listen to the full podcast: Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/0tEVrfNp92a7lbjDe6GMLI Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oprah-podcast/id1782960381 #oprahsbookclub

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by HBO Max. For your awards consideration, HBO Max presents Rooster. Starring Steve Carell, this new comedy series focuses on the complicated relationship between a successful author and his daughter. Don't miss the series IGN called hilarious and brilliant. Rooster is streaming on HBO Max. Watch now.

• 0:25Oprah Winfrey?

  Everybody, hello.

• 0:29Oprah Winfrey?

  Let me introduce you to this genius man, Ocean Vuong. Hello.

• 0:36Oprah Winfrey?

  Everybody here's read the book. Oh. Thank you. Okay, ready class? I love this book so much.

• 0:47Oprah Winfrey?

  Hi, everybody. A warm welcome to you. Thanks for joining us for Oprah's Book Club presented by Starbucks. It's so good to be here in my old, sweet home, Chicago, at a cozy Starbucks cafe. I think it's a great place to meet a friend and connect over a good book and a delicious cup of curated coffee. The pairing for this book club pick is an ice brown sugar oat milk shaken espresso. They say it's the ultimate pick me up. So my 114th book club selection, we're here to talk about it today. And I just have to say, I have to stop myself from tearing up when I think about this book

• 1:26Oprah Winfrey?

  because it is epic, it is poignant, it is hauntingly beautiful. And I read it back in October and I still sometimes wake up thinking about the characters. The book is called The Emperor of Gladness by celebrated author, Ocean Vuong. Welcome, Ocean Vuong.

• 1:56Oprah Winfrey?

  I want to talk to you about being this accomplished author with so many awards. Hard to mention them all. At just 36, you have a wild list of accomplishments. New York Times bestselling author, a professor of modern poetry at NYU, a multiple award-winning poet, essayist, novelist, screenwriter. You also won a MacArthur Genius Grant. And English isn't even your first language. Where does this come from? This wellspring of creativity?

• 2:32Speaker 02

  I have to say, I was raised by women who were illiterate. And I think about this often. Where does it come from? I think even though they were illiterate, they were the first poets. Because they saw that when they came to this country with nothing, they realized that with language, they can make anything happen.

• 2:50Oprah Winfrey?

  So I just want to say you and your family immigrated from Vietnam to the United States when you were just two years old. And I know your mother worked in a nail salon for 25 years to support the family. And she watched the Oprah Show every day at 4 o'clock. That TV would be on. That's what you told me when I called you.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  Sometimes it's just us three. Me, you, and her. On slow days, I would answer the phone at the nail salon. And, you know, she would be there working. And what's so interesting was that when you called me.

• 3:24Oprah Winfrey?

  This is Oprah. How are you?

• 3:27Speaker 02

  What?

• 3:28Oprah Winfrey?

  This is Oprah. Wait, wait. How are you?

• 3:33Speaker 02

  I recognized the voice right away. I just didn't believe that you were talking to me for any real reason. But when I heard your voice, I said, this is the voice I heard all my life at 4 o'clock when I answered the phone. And you know, I wanted to tell you this, that your voice was a kind of... Mediation for all of these women in the nail salon, both the workers and the people who went there to get their nails done. Because I saw them when they came in with their husbands, and the husbands would wait for a while, and then they would leave. And after a while, it would just be all women. And I found that their voices changed with your voice among them. And as a child, I was so interested. It was so interesting to hear speech. Everyone talking differently.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  They were more vulnerable. They were more open with each other. And I got to see my mother kind of use the show as a way to open up for herself and to learn the language. She would not always understand what was happening, but she would have this little trick where she would, every time there was like an inflected moment in the show with your voice, my mother would work on a client, she would go, "Oh, boy."

• 4:47Speaker 02

  And then the client would, it always works. You could, any given time, you could just say, "Oh, boy."

• 4:55Speaker 02

  And then the client would say, "Isn't that right?" And then she would learn what was happening from them, because her voice, her head is down, she couldn't hear it. But I saw this kind of town square that your voice created, and the themes, and what was really touching for me, and I didn't understand at that time. For a community that I grew up in, working poor immigrants, reading was very intimidating. We didn't step into bookstores or libraries. It felt like an impenetrable world that was not for us. And it was aligned with elitism and power and institutions and higher learning that we thought, "That ship has sailed for us."

• 5:38Speaker 02

  But when you held up the books in your show, my mother recognized that and says, "Oh." This is accessible. You're making the act of reading both accessibly dignified, but also fruitful for people who are outside of these realms of institutional elitism. And I saw the women talk about books in your show. And then they would walk across the Barnes and Noble, across the mall, and they would have languaged. They would come in and they would say, "This is the book I want. I know how to talk about it." And there's a kind of dignified confidence to literacy. And I don't know if anyone has talked about that, but I think that was the major byproduct that your show did, is that it made working-class people

• 6:23Speaker 02

  who don't have access to centers of knowledge. They don't get to be in a classroom and have, you know, high philosophy around craft or what have you. They get to participate in the vehicle of culture. And you made culture legible to them, who often don't have that chance. So I just want to say thank you so much for that.

• 6:44Oprah Winfrey?

  Oh, my God. Now I'm going to cry.

• 6:51Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, I think your mother is with us in spirit today. She would be so proud that it is now your book that I'm holding up and telling the world about her son. And when you were, you know, working in the nail salon, you're working at the Boston Market, how did you get to be Ocean Bong, the celebrated writer?

• 7:17Speaker 02

  Well, my mother knew I was a nerd.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  And we came up in Vietnam as rice farmers.

• 7:24Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 7:25Speaker 02

  I was the first to go to college, the first to read. And we've been rice farmers, very happily, for hundreds of years. It was the war that ejected us from that idyllic world into this one. And so by geopolitical violence and accident, I'm now a professor, in a way. But she knew that in this country, the sentence will be the medium that can make us change and change our lives. She didn't understand it, but she knew it was powerful. So she would drop me off before her shift at the nail salon at the public library. And she gave me this mandate. And she said, "You go in there."

• 8:07Speaker 02

  And you read everything,

• 8:10Speaker 02

  especially what you don't understand.

• 8:12Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  And it's so interesting because that's what I give my students now.

• 8:19Speaker 02

  I said, you have to move towards the unknown, the mystery. The condition of not knowing is the first step of knowledge.

• 8:27Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  Don't be afraid of not knowing. You owe it to yourself to go to the root of the mystery. And that is to work not only of pedagogy and education, but also of life. It goes beyond books.

• 8:44Oprah Winfrey?

  When I called you, I told you that when I told you I was choosing this as a book club, I said, I still think about Hi. I still think about Sonia, still think about these characters. Readers, didn't you love these characters? And don't they stay with you? And so I am just wondering how this story came to be. I'm always fascinated by the process by which authors come to tell their story. It feels like the emperor was always inside you somewhere. How did it come to be?

• 9:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, America has often been founded on the idea of the nuclear family. And one antidote to that might be the found family.

• 9:27Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 9:28Speaker 02

  But I actually think when we look at the history of our culture, it's the circumstantial family founded around labor. And so when I worked at Boston Market as a teenager, I found that it was actually the relationships that you had with people you don't choose. People who are cobbled together, working through a shift. And you start to know their footsteps. You start to feel the cologne they wear, the gum, and when that gum will expire. You can hear how they cough, how they talk. And the intimacy that comes from the circumstantial labor, cobbled together, is actually the foundation of so much of our country.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  So much of it is founded on labor, loneliness, and love in the midst of all that.

• 10:16Oprah Winfrey?

  I think that's so powerful, don't you all? You have your chosen family, you have your family that you're born into. Many people have a chosen family that they found. But all of us who work And certainly, I remember during certainly all the years that I spent here in Chicago, twenty-five years, just down the street, that we were our own circumstantial family. And were integrated in each other's lives in a way that you weren't integrated in the lives of all the people who were your biological family. And I have to say, you've created the most memorable, misfit, motley crew of characters.

• 10:57Oprah Winfrey?

  And I love that each one of them had their own level of kindness in their own unique way. And I think that that kind of group happens all over the world. People create camaraderie with each other. How did you come to realize each one of them and you were able to express each of their kindnesses?

• 11:20Speaker 02

  Well, I think when I was a fiction student, we were told, going back to Aristotle, that the greatest work of fiction usually has a reversal of fate. You have to change at the end to bring the audience a kind of catharsis. Rags to riches. He gets the girl. The girl gets the guy. You're gonna find the body. You'll find the murderer. So there's, it works in a very commercial way, that there's a promise of catharsis. There's a kind of deliverable. And it works in the same way when you buy a car, a home, or a washing machine. And I thought, and yet, American life, as I saw it, growing up as an immigrant

• 12:00Speaker 02

  in this country, didn't work like that. My aunt works at FedEx for almost forty years. My brother works at Dick's Sporting Goods for fifteen years. The people who I love, they work the same jobs. They drive the same car. They live in the same homes for twenty, thirty years. Some of them don't get raises. Some of them don't move up. And yet, their lives are not worthless. It's not like their lives are not...

• 12:28Oprah Winfrey?

  Meaningful.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  Meaningful.

• 12:30Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 12:31Speaker 02

  You know, and there was this, when I was trying to learn how to be a writer, everyone said you have to change. You have to improve.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  And meanwhile, American life, as I saw, wasn't improving. But it doesn't mean that these people didn't have lives full of dignity.

• 12:48Oprah Winfrey?

  That's why I love this book so much and why the characters, I think, have stayed with me. Because you, as the author, are the voice for the people whose stories never get told.

• 13:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:00Oprah Winfrey?

  Just ordinary folks, working every day, doing the best they can to keep their heads above water and going on with their lives and trying to have a little bit of laughter, a little bit of fun, a little bit of relief. And you do that so well because you have been that person. You just started out by sharing with us that you worked at Boston Market. Is that where the idea for the home market came from?

• 13:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I hope I changed it just enough.

• 13:31Speaker 02

  Not to have to hire a lawyer.

• 13:35Speaker 02

  But I worked there for two years. I worked at Panera Bread as well. And, you know, what I found was that it's easy to be kind when you have so much to give, when you have so much means, you have so much wealth. It's easy to give when your life doesn't change, when you can give so much. And it's a beautiful thing.

• 13:56Oprah Winfrey?

  It's easy to give when it doesn't cost you anything to give.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 13:59Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 13:59Speaker 02

  That's right. And what is it? Kindness without hope. When you don't have hope that the kindness will drastically change anyone's life, and yet you still give it. That has always fascinated me, even as a child. You know, we are a culture that fetishizes talent. Athletic talent, musical talent, writing talent. But I wonder what would happen if we had prodigies of kindness? If we can celebrate children when we tap into this innate kindness? And I saw that at the home market, at the Boston markets, at the Panera breads, where people are always, when there's so little they can do to affect change, they still go out of their way. They don't get paid extra.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  They don't get anything extra. And yet... It's the moment after the shifts, having the cigarettes, after being slammed, people being diagnosed with cancer in the middle of the shifts, getting on the phone calls.

• 14:56Oprah Winfrey?

  I cherish the time I get to sit down with the talented authors from my book club, and I am equally grateful for the time you all are spending with me here, that you in particular have come to listen, dear listener. Coming up, I share a few of my favorite passages from Ocean Vuong's sweeping novel, The Emperor of Gladness. He is the most exquisite writer. Stay with us.

• 15:23Speaker 03

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• 15:53Oprah Winfrey?

  I welcome you back, dear listener, to Oprah's Book Club. And I'm at a Starbucks in Chicago right now with an audience full of devoted readers. We are diving into what critics are calling epic, astonishing, and a masterwork. Ocean Vuong's The Emperor of Gladness, my 114th Oprah's Book Club selection. Let's get back to the conversation.

• 16:15Speaker 02

  There was a wild moment in my time at Boston Market that I'll still, I think I'll, it's been almost 20 years and it's still in my head, and it'll probably be in my head until I die. I didn't put it in the book because it's too dramatic. You know, sometimes as an author, you said, "Life is more dramatic than fiction can allow." You know, be too, too pressurized. But I was being trained early on by this man named Ruben. He was in his 50s and he was training me. And the first thing he taught me was how to eat a spinach croissant in under 30 seconds. He says, "If you're hungry, you don't have to take a break. You can, you can, you can slip two croissants in your apron." And then you can go into the freezer,

• 17:00Speaker 02

  because nobody goes into the freezer. You know, you can't go into the bathroom because a customer might see you.

• 17:06Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  That's really odd.

• 17:07Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  See someone eating a croissant. And then the next hour later, we're cleaning out the freezer. And there's something that's so peculiar with what I was talking about with circumstantial family. We have our backs to each other. I'm 19 years old. We're cleaning the freezer. And we're talking about family. We're talking, oh, you have a brother, what have you. And to this day, I'm haunted by what happened because he's talking about his sons. And he just says something. He says, you know, I can't tell my wife this. And I thought, oh, my God. You know, like, am I going to hear a crime of God or a crime of the law?

• 17:45Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  He says, I have three sons,

• 17:51Speaker 02

  but I only love one of them.

• 17:53Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  And I'm 19. I don't know what to say other than give an affirmative, kind of like, uh huh. You know, like, I just don't know what it meant.

• 18:01Oprah Winfrey?

  Uh huh.

• 18:03Speaker 02

  And he says, you know, there's no true connection I have with Jake. There's no reason for this. And the others do good by me. I do good by them. But I'm coming to realize it's such a strange thing that I only love one of them.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  Do you ever feel that? And I said, I don't know.

• 18:20Oprah Winfrey?

  I don't know. I'm 19.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:22Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 18:23Speaker 02

  But I think there's something about labor. There's enough anonymity. He knows that when we clock out at 6:00 P.M., I'll never see him until the next shift. I don't know where he lives. I don't know his sons. And there's something really unique about modern life, and maybe all of life, where that kind of laborious intimacy allows us to say things we won't even say to our priests, our loved ones, our family, our best friends, because there's no judgment.

• 18:55Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow. I thank you for sharing that story. I can see why that would live with you forever.

• 19:00Speaker 02

  I don't know why. I still think about that, and I don't understand it. But I just knew that I was receiving something really vulnerable.

• 19:08Oprah Winfrey?

  Intimate, personal, vulnerable, that he probably hadn't shared with anyone.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  Anyone, yeah.

• 19:14Oprah Winfrey?

  So I've heard you say, writing is about listening rather than making. I think that is so fascinating. What is it you're listening for?

• 19:26Oprah Winfrey?

  You say, "Writing is about listening rather than making."

• 19:30Speaker 02

  When I was a younger writer, I thought you had to fill the page or else nothing happens. But the more I worked at this, the more I realized that writing is about listening to the world. You're collaborating with the world. You don't shut it away and go into your little desk or your cave and create genius work. It doesn't work like that. Ultimately, nobody writes a good sentence by accident. It comes with care. You have to really care for the world. And every author's book is multiple drafts. It comes out of tireless care, obsession, worry. And when you hold up anyone's book, you're getting their best self.

• 20:14Speaker 02

  And the best self for me comes from really engaging with the world without judgment and really being interested in people. At the end of the day, all I would say is that, as an author, I'm just really interested in human beings. That's it. Everything else is craft. You can learn that. You'll find a way to get that. But what you can't learn is a deep investment in compassionate watching and listening of our species.

• 20:43Oprah Winfrey?

  And that's what this whole story is all about. It means you've watched and observed. And I feel that parts of you are high, but then you're not high. So you are high and not high, right?

• 20:58Speaker 02

  He's a lot better than me. I get one draft at life and I usually mess it up. But Hi got 12 drafts. So he's a little more refined.

• 21:10Oprah Winfrey?

  OK, so I will tell you that I read Chapter 1 sometimes just to soothe myself, particularly in these times. And over Christmas holidays, I was with my chosen family. I've raised these girls since they were 12 years old. And now they're in their 30s. And there were four of us at my house. And we were sitting around a crackling fire.

• 21:38Oprah Winfrey?

  Reading out loud.

• 21:40Speaker 02

  Uh oh.

• 21:41Oprah Winfrey?

  Chapter one. I mean, when I think of that, I think about the people as teenagers drinking in their father's trucks. And I think, wow, all of that's true. And then time passes and then they're sitting there in the same trucks or different trucks. And there they are with the babies in their arms and they don't even know how they got there. How were you able to get that?

• 22:05Speaker 02

  I think at the heart of every writer, you have to really love the world, even when it's difficult to love. And I think description is autobiographical in that when you describe something, you're giving it a point of view. How you describe something, how you see something says a lot about yourself. And I think I saw all these people in my life and I never heard anyone write about them. And I said, if the sentence can pin life to the page, I want to pin these people who never got to get out. You know, we fetishize these hero's journey about getting out of this town. And it's a very cathartic one. We love these stories.

• 22:49Speaker 02

  We want to feel that everyone can get out, but the majority of people can't.

• 22:53Oprah Winfrey?

  And won't.

• 22:54Speaker 02

  And won't. And sometimes by choice, sometimes they have to stay and take care of elders who are ill. They have jobs they can't leave. And I just didn't see the literary world write about people who had to stay. Because that's actually much more interesting to me. It's easy to go to the big city and have a different life. It's much harder, but more interesting to ask yourself, how do I make do without escape? That becomes an existential question. How do I make do in this body if I can't leave it? The book starts with a young man deciding to jump off a bridge.

• 23:33Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 23:34Speaker 02

  And he's stopped by an elderly widow doing laundry. And it's a personal.

• 23:41Speaker 02

  Crux for me, because when I was a teenager, one of my best friends took his own life with a gun. He was 16. My uncle, at 28, took his own life. And usually, when we talk about suicide, it's usually like, oh, they struggled, but then they didn't do it. And that's triumphant. Great. But actually, what I'm more interested in is like, how do you live and go on in the aftermath of that decision? If you decide to end your life and then ultimately decide not to, what's day two look like? What's day three look like? What's the aftermath of living and deciding to live

• 24:24Speaker 02

  and have the will to live without the hope of living? And I just, I wanted to know that of my uncle, because I didn't get that from him. And so I think I write in order to understand that. You know, what if he got to have an aftermath where he's still alive? What would that life look like? That seemed like a much more interesting place to write a book from, rather than to say, oh, well, they didn't do it. End of story. Everyone clap.

• 24:49Oprah Winfrey?

  And then life goes on.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:52Oprah Winfrey?

  And you think life goes on just as it was before.

• 24:54Speaker 02

  Right.

• 24:55Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, Hai is a 19-year-old who meets Grizina, an elderly woman who brings hope into Hai's life against all odds. And she and Hai form an unlikely friendship. What was your intention in bringing these two characters together?

• 25:11Speaker 02

  Oh, I felt, you know, on one hand, they're very different. He's 19, she's 84.

• 25:17Oprah Winfrey?

  Was there a Grizina in your life? Because you dedicate the book to Grizina. And you say, in memory of Grizina.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's a long, convoluted story, but Grizina is the grandmother of my partner. And when I was in college, I dropped out of business school. I lost my housing, lost my tuition. And I was casually dating my partner, Peter. And he was in law school. And we were kids. And I said, I'm kind of homeless, but I want to go to school and study English. You know, and he said, one day he called me. I talked to my mom. My grandma lives alone. She's very independent. She wants to stay in the house that she lived in after fleeing Stalin, fleeing World War II. She's a self-made person, a refugee, like myself. And you can live with her and go to school.

• 26:07Speaker 02

  And so I lived with her for three years. And we had this incredible bond that then led to my partner and I's relationship blooming. Because it's this kind of strange quintessential American family. He would visit from school, but I would live with her every day. And here we are, two refugees from two different wars, two different continents, 20 years apart. And we are in Brooklyn, living probably the most American life I can think of. It's not the white picket fence American life, but it's still true. And that reciprocal care.

• 26:43Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 26:43Speaker 02

  I had to care for her as she looked out for me. And I was so inspired by this because I think both the very young and the very old are on the margins of society. They're no longer in the center. The young are said, oh, you don't know enough, you don't have enough, you don't own enough to contribute, you don't have a degree, you don't have the credentials. And the old, you're defunct, you're out of the market, you're in the retirement, push yourself away. And so both the young and the very old, in my observation in this country, live in a perennial loneliness.

• 27:21Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  And when they get together, you realize there are actually a lot of common ground. When people have been pushed to the center, I wanted to write a book where the people who were pushed to the absolute fringes of society get to occupy the center. And the camera would just not pan away. I did not want a plot that solved them. I did not want anyone to get a better job, to have a better home. There's no improvement. It's just life and it's kindness without hope, which is kindness at the highest cost. And yet, we all know people every day who are kind and gracious and good to each other despite all of that. Kindness without any hope of return. That's just something I'm so fascinated in.

• 28:06Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, that's why I loved on page 253, where Grizina is talking, and she says, To be alive and try to be a decent person and not turn it into anything big or grand, that's the hardest thing of all. You think being president is hard? Ha. Didn't you notice that every president becomes a millionaire after he leaves office? If you can be nobody and stand on your own two feet for as long as I have, that's enough. People don't know what's enough, La Boss. That's their problem. They think they suffer, but they're actually just bored. They don't eat enough carrots. I love that. But I love that because she's so, that is so right.

• 28:48Oprah Winfrey?

  I mean, to be able to stand on your own and to continue to be kind in a world that's often very unkind to you. Yeah. That's the real hard work. Yeah. Thank you for choosing the Oprah Podcast and for listening to my conversation with celebrated writer Ocean Vuong. His extraordinary novel, The Emperor of Gladness, is my 114th Oprah's Book Club pick. And let me just say, I just think it's a must read. It's one of those books that should be in your library. And I'm with an audience full of people who have read the book and have thoughtful questions for Ocean. Stay with us.

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• 29:54Oprah Winfrey?

  Welcome back to Oprah's Book Club. I'm sitting down with award-winning author Ocean Vuong, author of my 114th Book Club selection, The Emperor of Gladness. It's a sweeping tale, so poetically and vividly written. On every page, it feels like you're in the story, you're in it with the characters. I know our audience felt the same way, so let's hear what questions our readers have for Ocean. I love to hear what parts of the book they connected to, so let's get back to it. Our audience has read this book and I know you're all excited to be able to ask questions. Prashida, it's you. Hi.

• 30:29Speaker 06

  Hi.

• 30:30Oprah Winfrey?

  Hi.

• 30:30Speaker 06

  Hi. Congrats on your book. It's a masterpiece, I must say that. I felt a close relation with Grasina and Hai. There were some moments I burst into tears. I think Grasina and Hai heal each other and they were literally like a medicine to each other. So my question is, there were so many poetic lines in the book. And there was this line at the beginning of the chapter, "The hardest thing in the world is to live only once." So what does this line mean to you? Does it resonate for you on any personal level? Or does it resonate with Hai and the characters involved?

• 31:12Oprah Winfrey?

  That's how the book begins, "The hardest thing in the world is to live only once."

• 31:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, in a sense, you know, the idea of YOLO, you only live once,

• 31:23Speaker 02

  has been really destructive to our world. You know, corporations think they only have one life to harvest

• 31:31Speaker 02

  the most profit out of the environment and therefore harm the environment. You know, we're told again and again, no regrets, just seize the day. And it's very self-centered in a way. But I think another way to think about you only live once is, what if you only have one chance to live with care, consideration, a sense of obligation to each other? And it's not even like this, you know, goody, woo-woo selflessness, but it actually makes your life much better when you live with the obligation that you owe each other everything, both strangers and family and your environment and your community. And so I wanted to just change the meaning of YOLO.

• 32:17Speaker 02

  And as a poet, I love that one phrase could have double meaning. You can approach it that if you only have one life, what if you didn't just grab everything you can in the candy store, leaving it a total catastrophe in your wake? But what if you did it so that other people can also inhabit that space? You can improve it. And, you know, our culture often thinks that's silly, that's childish, right? It's too wholesome and earnest. But I think earnestness is an incredible courageous thing. I respect it immensely in the people I meet and the students I have. If you're earnest and sincere, it's the most greatest truth because it means that you're willing to risk vulnerability and ridicule.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  You're willing to be wrong and come off silly because you believe in everything. I think it's okay to believe in everything. It's okay to believe that if you have this one life, you should try to make it better for other people. Children just have that. It's not a question to them. But as you get older, we start to be more fearful of that because we think that if I believe in goodness too much, then I've fallen for something.

• 33:26Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  I've been duped. I've been stymied into believing goodness. And sometimes it's really hard. There are days where I can't do it. But that's my north star. And that's why I started the book with that north star. Is that the hardest thing is to live only once. So make it count and make it count for others as well.

• 33:45Oprah Winfrey?

  Thank you, Prashita. When you started the book, did you start it with high story? Because I've talked to authors, they start in the middle. Wally Lamb told me he started, you know, this much is true. He started it in the middle because he had the idea for the twins. Where did it start for you?

• 34:01Speaker 02

  It started with landscape. It started with the town. I write by hand. So I wrote this the day after the election in 2020. When the results were coming in, it was kind of chaotic. No one knew what was the results were. And I said, all right, I'm going to rent a room. I live in Western Massachusetts. I'm going to rent a little cabin and just go away. And when I come back, hopefully, we'll know what's happening. But it got more and more convoluted, as you remember, from that election.

• 34:32Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 34:33Speaker 02

  And no one knew where the country was going to be headed, who was going to head it. And I turned off all the radios and TV. I went to this cabin. I start writing by hand. And I spent nine pages writing about the towns in the Connecticut River Valley that sustained me, that I grew up in, because I wanted to really think like, what is my America? What is America? And I want to really sink in to the town as a character, as description. I wanted to really love it, in all of its difficulty, to just present it and not go on with a plot. So it started with space. It started with land and the history of land, because land is tied to history.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  And at the end of the day, I think I write historical fiction, not in the sense of, you know, a period piece, but I write fiction that has history involved in it, and land is a part of history.

• 35:28Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, on page three, where you're describing the natural area, and you say, "Look how the birches blackened all night by starlings, shatter when dawn's first sparks touch their beaks." I went, "Holy Jesus, who is this guy?"

• 35:47Oprah Winfrey?

  "When dawn's first shadow touches their beaks." It felt like we were right there, watching them disperse, right?

• 35:56Speaker 02

  Well, the sentence is a linear technology, so it's a kind of a track. And what you do as an author is that you're asking a reader for their trust to say, "Just stay with me in this track," because it's a big leap of faith. It's almost like when you're riding on a roller coaster. It's like, it's one track. And as an author, you have to say, "Well, I'm gonna, let's just come with me, and we're gonna zoom in on something that people often drive past and don't think about." And so the book is a wonderful opportunity to recalibrate value systems, to a different hierarchy of values. Let's just stay on these starlings and love this landscape, because it's so brutal, because it's so fruitful to the communities that live it.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  And also, what is America? You know, I was haunted by that. I don't know what next week is gonna look like, but I know that this landscape, in all of its...

• 36:53Speaker 02

  Paradoxes has sustained my imagination and I wanted to be true to its history.

• 36:59Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow. Crystal is here. I hear the small town setting of this story. Really, you connected with this?

• 37:06Speaker 07

  Very much so.

• 37:07Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 37:07Speaker 07

  Thank you so much, Ocean, for giving us this book. It was incredible. I loved it.

• 37:12Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 37:13Speaker 07

  So I know that this is set in New England, but it felt like East Gladness could be any small town, really, suspended in time. I grew up in Middle America, in and around towns that were left behind, and it immediately transported me in chapter one, when I was really feeling something deeply familiar. So I felt really life at the edge of nothing, the looming presence of addiction, the randomness of tragedy, working poverty, fast food. And this isn't the first time that you've written about small towns and near rural life.

• 37:53Speaker 07

  And I wanted to know what draws you to this kind of setting and what continues to inspire you about places like this.

• 38:02Speaker 02

  I grew up in Hartford, and Hartford is interesting because if you drive, you're in the middle of the city, and it's the city that's often been forgotten. We often have a saying that all the good things are sucked up by Boston and New York. And so it is a place where, when you come to it, the people there are the people who can't get out, right? They're what's left over. We have that mentality. And Hartford's interesting. You drive 20 minutes and you'll be in a cornfield. You could be in the middle of skyscrapers, drive 20 minutes in any direction, you'd be in a smack dab in a cornfield.

• 38:37Oprah Winfrey?

  I was surprised to hear that because I used to go to Hartford. My friend Gail started her career there in Hartford.

• 38:44Speaker 02

  Wow, really?

• 38:45Oprah Winfrey?

  WFSP in Hartford, yes. And so I was thinking, I didn't know there were cornfields near Hartford at all. Yes.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. It's right across the river, and a lot of people work in the fields and then live in the city and vice versa. And I realized that when you live in a small town, a small community, you owe respect to everybody because you can't be, pardon my French, an asshole. If you are, people know your name and they know your family and they know your grandmother. And I felt like there's an incredible obligation that you have by offering each other dignity because there's nowhere to hide. You can be a jerk in New York and you just fade into the subway and then that's it. But there's no anonymity. You have to stand by what you believe. You have to defend and argue yourself and then you have to face each other when you don't agree.

• 39:36Speaker 02

  You might have to work side by side. And so I wanted to see that that's actually not a place left behind. That's an advantageous, even innovative way to relate to people. When you cannot hide behind anything, you have to face each other with respect, dignity, and a kind of proximity that so much of America really is. If you talk to people, everybody kind of wants the same thing. Even though we have vastly chaotic and disparate political beliefs, at the end of the day, we want to live with dignity and respect for each other. And living in a small town forces you to do that. And it allows you dexterity with the language.

• 40:19Speaker 02

  You know how to talk about something without offending each other, right? You talk so that you can see each other again at the laundromat because you will. Because you will. Everybody knows your business. Becky, do you have a question? What is it?

• 40:35Speaker 08

  On page 23, one of my favorite lines, and I even wrote a little heart by it. And after I read it, I went and shared it with my family as well. "Hi, ask Grazina, when her husband died, how did she know?" And she said, "When does anybody die?" She shrugged. "When God says, 'Well done.'" So I would love to know what that line means to you. Yeah, thank you.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  It was all her, you know. I used to be really annoyed before I wrote a novel when authors say, "Oh, I don't know. The characters told me what to do." You know, I just follow them along. And I said, "Oh, come on. You wrote the whole thing. You know what it is." But when I started writing a novel, I think what happens is that you create a character and you give them parameters of things that they would or wouldn't do. And you have to be faithful to that and not betray that. And even though they'll say things and do things that I personally would never say and do, it's still true to them. And when those parameters are so narrow and they're so realized,

• 41:48Speaker 02

  you really sit down and say, "What would they say?" And they would only say the things if you're faithful to those parameters. And sometimes you can force it and it gets creaky and bad. But if you're faithful, they'll keep revealing something so idiosyncratic. And when I was writing that scene by hand, writing by hand is really helpful for me because I stay in the scene longer. If I write on the computer, it's too quick. I stay and I said, "How is she going to respond to this question?" I literally was like, "Come on." You know, and I'm in her world and she's leading me forward. So you don't get writer's block? I don't. I don't. I don't believe in that because writer's block is in relation to productivity.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  Because then you have to ask, "Well, block according to whom? Block according to what measure of production?" So for me, it's like if I can't write, which happens, I think. And that's productive. It's not about just creating quantifiable.

• 42:48Oprah Winfrey?

  That's why you got the MacArthur's Genius Grant. That's what the Genius Grant is all about.

• 42:58Speaker 02

  Thinking a little too much and getting a few white hairs and, you know.

• 43:01Oprah Winfrey?

  I got it. I got it. All right. Other questions from the audience. Rebecca, I hear you have a question for me.

• 43:08Speaker 09

  I do. I really related to the relationship between Grizina and Hi when I was reading this book. My grandmother moved in with my family almost 20 years ago and she also has dementia. So there were a lot of moments where she fell and we had to rush her to the hospital. So seeing Hi go through that same thing felt really familiar. So Oprah, I was wondering, is there a character/relationship storyline in this book that really resonates with you?

• 43:31Oprah Winfrey?

  Every part of it resonated with me. I was, I, I, I, I loved Sonny. I love Sonny's relationship with Hi. I love Grizina's relationship with Hi. I loved everybody in the home market. I wanted to go there and have some of that damn cornbread. I could taste that cornbread. I know it's got a lot of sugar in it, but I, I wanted to have some cornbread. And I, I, I just thought, I wish I could go to the home market and hang out and sit there and hang with everybody. I, I, I really did. I mean, obviously, the mother figure in me was like, call your mother. Go to your mother. Are you gonna go? And my girls, when they were reading it, they were like, is he never gonna, you see, he's gonna definitely run into his mother, right?

• 44:16Oprah Winfrey?

  He's gonna run into his mother. And I kept thinking he's gonna run to his mother. And I'm not telling you whether he did or not, but I really wanted that relationship to also be resolved in some way. But I couldn't pick a character. I mean, I think it would be a hoot to sit with Grizina and have some, one of those coffee blends here from Starbucks. I would think that would be great. But all of them, do you have a favorite?

• 44:41Speaker 02

  Oh, God, it's, it's like choosing the favorites among your children. And I, although you, people do.

• 44:46Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, as he told you, he only loved one son, yes.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  But I, I think I would have, I would learn a lot from Maureen.

• 44:57Oprah Winfrey?

  Oh.

• 44:58Speaker 02

  Because I feel like there's more to her and I, I feel like I'm the, I can get more out of her. You know, there's so much life there, there's so much hurt. And yet, she's always around for everybody because she has nothing at home. You know, she lives in a, a kitchen to, you know, she's running out of money to, to heat her house, so she lives in a sleeping bag. Her son's died. And so she's very cranky, but that's just the, the facade to make it through the world as a woman.

• 45:28Oprah Winfrey?

  And when they all went out looking for that diamond, y'all knew you weren't gonna find a diamond, right?

• 45:33Speaker 02

  No. Which is purposeful, because like-

• 45:37Oprah Winfrey?

  They all did it for him?

• 45:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:38Oprah Winfrey?

  They all did it for him?

• 45:39Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 45:39Oprah Winfrey?

  They knew they weren't gonna find it.

• 45:41Speaker 02

  I wanted to do the hero's journey without the payoff. So then it's just, it's just the love that pushed them forward, not the diamond. You don't get the ring. There's no like final gift.

• 45:55Oprah Winfrey?

  This is what's so beautiful about the book, don't you think? This is what's so beautiful about the book. It's just ordinary people living their lives. The thing that got me, though, was the pig scene. I don't know if, I mean, wasn't, where did that come from? Did you have a pig experience in your own life?

• 46:12Speaker 02

  I did.

• 46:15Speaker 02

  I worked on a tobacco farm illegally as a child. I got paid under the table. I was 15. It was for $9.50, which was back in 2002, was a whole load of money. The minimum wage was $7.15, so you get $9.50 picking tobacco. It meant the world, but some of the workers there, they were all older. They also, they said, hey, you wanna come to this slaughterhouse? You make $20 an hour.

• 46:46Oprah Winfrey?

  You were making $9.50?

• 46:47Speaker 02

  $9.50.

• 46:48Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay.

• 46:48Speaker 02

  So it's $20 at this slaughterhouse in Connecticut. And I thought, you know, I didn't really, I thought in my head, in my 15-year-old head, it was like just packaging meat, you know? Like I thought, oh, you just put it in a little tray and then it goes off to the supermarket. And I followed these guys, you know, in the pickup truck. One day, they drove us there. And it was my like trial. I lasted just 30 minutes. I went in, I looked, I said, it was like war.

• 47:18Speaker 02

  And I was so interested in that because I think often we say, there's humanity and then there's animalistic tendencies. But when I look at our history as a species, it's the humans that are the most animalistic. And the way that these hogs were butchered was so cruel, so bloody.

• 47:43Speaker 02

  And I wanted to parallel that as an allegory with how labor is in this country. You know, people work day in and night out, and they're just thrown to the wolves. And when their bodies break, as many of my relatives' bodies stop working, my mother's breast cancer, which ultimately killed her, was most likely breathing all the chemicals in factories and nail salons. You're just thrown out. And the slaughter of human beings, both in the opioid epidemic and the labor system, is very parallel to the slaughter of animals. And I've learned that if we want to really know how brutal we can be as a species, we have to look at what we've done to animals.

• 48:25Speaker 02

  And that becomes the foreshadow of what we will do to each other. Whoa, I'm gonna sit with that a second. Okay, Ryan, Ryan, okay, hi.

• 48:35Speaker 10

  Hi, I want to say I thoroughly enjoyed this book from cover to cover.

• 48:38Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 48:39Speaker 10

  So my question actually is in reference to the hog butchering scene. You mentioned emperor hogs at that point. Wayne, I think, is describing the emperor hogs. And there's also a frequent reference to penguins through Sony's Origami and his dream, where he describes the people in the town as little penguins in little houses. It made me think of emperor penguins. So this brings me to the title. Can you shed some light on the use of the word emperor in the title in reference to that?

• 49:05Speaker 02

  Oh, very good, very good reader. The professor in me gives you an A+. So there are many allusions to this. And it starts with the Hamlet quote, right? "We fat all creatures else to fat us. We fat ourselves for maggots." And so it's a lovely quote because in that is this anxiety of the Anthropocene. All our dreams and wishes, for what? To give a nice buffet to the maggots, right? And it's a wonderful way, it sounds morbid, but it's actually a wonderful way to live life, to say that all the petty arguments, for what? We're gonna all end up in the same place. If we're lucky, we'll get a deathbed, right?

• 49:49Speaker 02

  We get to meet the people that raised us and supported us before we become food for maggots. And so the emperor, the ultimate emperor for Shakespeare, was the maggot. The smallest thing is the ruler of us all. But I like the title as a poet because there's always double meanings, right? So it feels very triumphant when you see it like in a bookstore. The Emperor of Gladness. I'm gonna read it and feel all the good things.

• 50:14Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 50:15Speaker 02

  But as you see it in the first chapter, Gladness as a town doesn't exist. It's been renamed to Millsap. And so to be the emperor of Gladness is to be the emperor of nothing, of emptiness. And when the emperor hogs, like naming is also a kind of warping of meaning. They're called emperor hogs, not because they rule over anything, but because they historically have been used to feed the emperor. And it's such a cruel part of naming. And so I hope that when readers get to that revelation, the title starts to change tone. And as a poet, I just love it when the same words start to get warped.

• 50:57Speaker 02

  I think ultimately, that's what I'm interested in, is warping what was once stable towards something much more malleable. It's not about making something concrete, but dissolving it towards the end of the book. That's my hope. And emperor is a wonderful word that has multiple meanings in that sense.

• 51:14Speaker 10

  Thank you.

• 51:15Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow. Many of the characters struggle with depression. There's a reason for that, right?

• 51:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:21Oprah Winfrey?

  What is that reason?

• 51:23Speaker 02

  Well, I think it's important to de-stigmatize sadness and depression. I think if anyone's paying attention in the 21st century, they should be sad. But it doesn't mean that they're condemned to sadness. And this is what your show did. When I was in the nail salon as an eight-year-old, what you see is a bunch of strangers come together. And you talked about sadness, you talked about families falling apart, you talked about people surviving sexual assault on your show. And all of a sudden, these women, all of whom are strangers, now have permission to share their stories. And suddenly, I saw... Language, you know, because that's what your show was, is talking. Yeah.

• 52:06Speaker 02

  Language suddenly became this permission for everyone to bypass the small talk, bypass talking about the weather or where I'm from, the Patriots. Yeah. And talk about our moments that keep us up at night and to de-stigmatize vulnerability. Hmm. And everyone in the nail salon just lit up and they were all in the same shared moment. And there was an incredible moment, another moment for me, there's these two moments that stuck with me in the nail salon, where my mother was not working on this woman, but she was next to the same desk.

• 52:45Speaker 02

  And your show was talking about estranged families, parents not being able to talk, something like that. And we were all kind of rapped and chit-chatting and this woman getting her nail done, she stopped and she just says, huh, well, some days I wish I was, I didn't have any parents. And everyone was just kind of like, what do we, what do we do, you know? There was a moment, to me as a child, it felt endless. Because I, I knew enough to think, that's a crazy thing to say, because that means you wouldn't be alive. Yeah. And all of a sudden, another woman down the, down the aisle just started comforting her.

• 53:26Speaker 02

  And before you know it, everyone said, you know what, I, I feel the same way too, but there's other ways. You don't have to feel that, you know, and then, and then the person working on their nail, my, my mom's friend, said, well, I'm glad you're here because I wouldn't get to make your hands so beautiful. And all of a sudden, here we are in an afternoon in Connecticut, surrounding a woman who maybe wished she wasn't born and trying to convince her that she should have been here. And then that revealed this kind of doubt in ourselves. Yes, yes. And then she, you know, it's interesting, she just started laughing. And we, we laugh because it's a relief of tension. And, and we all kind of, that session just ended with everyone laughing.

• 54:10Speaker 02

  I don't know why these things happen, but language creates more language. And when we pay attention to it, the way you've done your whole career. You open up these little chasms. That woman said what she said. We met her where she was. And it was because this.

• 54:31Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 54:31Speaker 02

  Conversation.

• 54:32Oprah Winfrey?

  Conversation. Creating community. Your mother died of cancer in 2019. And I read that you said that ever since you lost her, you felt like your life has been lived in only two days. Can you explain that?

• 54:48Speaker 02

  There's just the yesterday when she was here. And then there's the today when she's not. I know there's been many years since. I can't, I can't, it's only one threshold. Mom and no mom. I was raised by a single mother. And, you know, when I was at her deathbed, I couldn't say what I wanted to say. As much as I just talked about how language makes more language, sometimes when you're kneeling at your mom's deathbed and she's hallucinating, you can't say the conversations. You have to meet them where they are. And I didn't get to say what I wanted to say to her. Which is why I wrote that in the last page of this book.

• 55:29Speaker 02

  The last page of this book is what I wanted to say to my mother. And I think that's the most powerful thing about fiction is that you give yourself a second chance. You create a scenario where these characters can play it out for you. And Hai and his mother has this conversation that I wish I had with my mom. But I had no right to bring that on to her when she's taking her last breaths. And so you write fiction to create something that's shareable for people. And in a way, it's a fantasy. It's what I hoped I could say. But I didn't get to say it to the real person. And so I create a dreamland where everyone gets to say what they need to say.

• 56:13Oprah Winfrey?

  I'm so glad you said it. I'm so glad you did. I think that this. Book is an offering to the world. I just hope that people are as moved to understand the voices of the voiceless as we all have been, who've had the benefit of being able to receive your gift early this year. The Emperor of Gladness. Thank you. Ocean Bong, thank you for this magnificent novel. There's so much more we could talk about. A big thank you to our wonderful Starbucks partners for supporting us. I hope you buy the book. And then I think it's such a fun idea to head to your local Starbucks cafe with a friend.

• 56:57Oprah Winfrey?

  And the best thing in the world, I can tell you, is if you're reading it and a friend is reading it too, because then you can talk about all the characters. So, thank you so much. Thank you, Oprah. Thank you so much. And thank you all for listening and watching. And we hope you'll join our community and become a part of all of our conversations. Subscribe to the Oprah Podcast on YouTube and follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Go well, everybody. The Emperor of Gladness.

• 57:37Speaker 11

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