Ocean Vuong and the Kindling of Community
by Sebastian Snow
cover photo by Jungmin Woo, modeled by Jinny Woo
When I was 13, I was thrown into a poetry workshop by a family friend. She thought I had potential, even though I didn't even have a passion or even interest in poetry. As the weeks went by in the workshop, I couldn't help but feel a disconnect. The works we focused on centered on people roughly unreachable to me. Older white people who hadn't thought about the world outside of them. Straight men who waxed sonnets for their picturesque lovers. Lives, that, no matter how beautifully rendered, I couldn't connect to. I started to wonder if I could ever be a poet. Then, the instructor mentioned Ocean Vuong.
“He's gay, he's Vietnamese, and he was first published at 23,” she said to the class. My peer poked at my side and whispered, “That's gonna be you.” He was referring to the fact that Vuong had been accomplished at such a young age, and that one day, I could be as well. He didn't know I was queer, or Vietnamese. But I knew. I ordered a copy of Night Sky With Exit Wounds as soon as I could.
Vuong's work was so immediately resonant it felt overwhelming. Reminded of his name, I'd compare it to all the times I was almost swallowed at sea as a child – under the same mass my Vietnamese family survived. His writing brought me back to a world I knew, yet hadn’t begun to explore. It held me as much as it swallowed me.
That is to say, while Ocean Vuong's poems saw me more than anyone's did, they also reopened wounds I didn't even know I had. Tales of immigration, disconnection with family, the horrors of war: all specifically linked to the Vietnamese diaspora. It was the first time I began to think consciously about my family, and all that they had experienced to get to where they are now.
I can still see the words I underlined when I was thirteen. In “Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong”: Just call it horizon / & you'll never reach it. In “Seventh Circle of the Earth”: Look how happy we are / to be no one / & still / American. In one of my all-time favorite poems, “Immigrant Halibun”: He laughs despite knowing he has ruined every beautiful thing just to prove beauty cannot change him. These words were stunning, but the heart-wrenching thing is the fact that they were crafted from the pain he had felt. The same pain my family had felt. The same pain my community had felt, and still feels, to this day.
It wasn't until then that I truly realized the power of poetry. It wasn't just a letter. It was an active conversation, and with that, an active connection. It was the words that you took and the words you left behind. It was the way you not only found yourself but the people that you love and know and care for, in between the margins.
Two and a half years later, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous graces the world. A fiction novel soaked with Ocean's experience. A story about a gay Vietnamese poet and his heartbreakingly difficult relationship with his illiterate, traumatized, and persevering mother. The book touched me on many levels as someone who grew up with a refugee mother. Although I know bits and pieces of her childhood, I can't remember ever discussing the emotional impact it had on her. Even though we still haven't had that conversation in words, perhaps we've had it through art. A few weeks ago, she told me she had finally started reading the book. "I can only handle so much at a time--it's so similar to my childhood it's exhausting," she said. I paused before replying, "I feel similarly." I like to believe we began to understand each other then.
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous was not just monumental for us, however. It was a massive success. His previous poetry collections may have demonstrated his incredible ability for writing, but On Earth made him one of the boldest, most prominent contemporary writers. People who weren't readers were picking up this book, just to see the kind of person it would shape them into. Not just Vietnamese people, and not just Asian people either. This came as a huge shock to me. If Night Sky With Exit Wounds proved to me that I could be a writer, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous proved that I could be wanted as a writer. Not despite my experiences, but through them.
Transit by Jungmin Woo: “White clothing in Korea symbolizes death and is often known to be a colour traditionally worn for mourning. Death comes in many forms: It can take on the literal form of someone passing away while other times “death” could reflect the experiences and traumas that make us feel as if our spirit and soul are fading. Asian Amerians are often told to transform to their environment. We are told what is ours and what is not. Constantly pushed to fit into “American standards”, and when we finally adjust, we are left out of our Asian identities. There is a certain death that also comes with the erasure of our culture and voices […] No matter how many ‘deaths’ we face, I hope we will be able to reconcile with our past self and have the courage to find our future selves.”