Ocean Vuong: Indian students are struggling with visas but the most exciting literature will come from them

Time of India

3 days ago

Ocean Vuong
1. You have quite a huge fan base here in India. Have you had any memorable interactions with Indian readers or writers?
My earliest friendship was with a boy from Mumbai and I grew up with him. But my major encounter with India actually comes from my students. This is my 11th year teaching as a professor at NYU — I've also taught at UMass — and every year, I have Indian students. They are the ones who really raise the bar for my American students because they have a different worldview. They also don't worship the canon as much as Americans do. They say, 'Okay, well, the Anglophone English canon is fine, but there are other things.' Their ambivalence toward it is much more objective than the dogma that's often taught here. I'm really excited for them to write. I'm telling you, it's a matter of when, not if, you'll see their books soon. The most talented and exciting literary works from the Anglophonic sphere will come from India. They're struggling now because of what's happening in America with visas. So, I'm writing a lot of reports to the government, testifying on their behalf. And it's really sad, because they're already talented. They don't need me to testify.
As for writers,
Jhumpa Lahiri
wrote about New England where I'm from. When she wrote about Dunkin' Donuts, about snow, about Boston, I realised she was the first non-white writer to write about the place I lived in. I didn't know someone could do that.
2. You said your latest novel 'The Emperor of Gladness', which draws from your experiences working in fast-food joints, has been 'the hardest dang book I've written in my little life.' Why was it so hard?
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The book is an epic of interiority. An epic that doesn't go anywhere. It's a hero's journey that refuses to move. And there are very few models for that. You can argue that James Joyce's 'Ulysses' is one — and that was certainly a major inspiration. But it was still something new for me. It's about the day-to-day slog of immigrants; their sobering reality of going to the shift again and again. You come and say, 'I'm going to get a house. I'm going to get a job. I'm going to be a manager. I'll be a CEO. I'll own my own company.' And then 10, 20 years later, you realise, it's time to clock in and clock out. You don't have enough savings to own anything. Not even your own home—let alone a company.
And also, it's the first book I've written without my mom being alive. As a quintessential immigrant child, I told myself that everything was for her. And then, when she died at a very young age — only 51 — I thought, gosh, what do I do now? I didn't want to write for myself. It seemed so silly. But it was a question I had to think through. If I did write for myself, what would that even look like? So, it was both the satisfaction of completion, but also a sense of betrayal and guilt. Which is why it's the hardest book.
3. You grew up marginalised on multiple fronts — class, race, sexuality — in a violent household. Now, at 36, you're a celebrated writer and a poster-boy for the American dream. How do you personally reconcile your journey with the shifting idea of America today with Trump at the helm?
That's a beautiful question. I'm not so interested in the American dream as I am in Americans who dream. Despite all my scepticism about the myth of this country, the infrastructure does allow for some to come through — like myself. But again, it's always the exception rather than the rule. I think America should just be more honest with itself and say: 'We only want and support the exception. We can't support everybody else.' That's why we have some of the largest income gaps in the world. We're losing the middle class. I'm a product of the welfare state. I'm a product of democratic socialist reforms in blue states. We had Medicare before Obamacare because I was in Connecticut, which is a liberal state. We had welfare. I had scholarships. I wouldn't have made it without the welfare state, without government assistance. And that's still relatively new. Once upon a time in this country — the early 20th century — you couldn't go to college unless you were a citizen. And through the Chinese Exclusion Act, all Asian Americans were barred from citizenship. That meant none of us could go to school or have upward mobility for a long time. So, I'm a product of the 21st century, and also of American politics and social reforms. That gave me opportunities that weren't there before. But again, that's still an exception. Not everyone gets that.
4. You're also a product of war. Experiences shaped by your family's journey from Vietnam. In 2025, we've had so many new waves of conflict and displacement. Do you ever imagine the stories that women and children displaced by today's wars might create in the future?
War is the most common legacy of our species. War and literature actually go side by side. For as long as there's been war, as long as there've been soldiers, there've been poets—going back to the 'Iliad', Homer's
Odyssey
, Gilgamesh. The Bhagavad Gita is about war, right? These things are very common. But my critique of the upper-middle-class publishing world in America is that it tends to ignore that. If you didn't know better—if you only read the American canon—you'd think most people live in the suburbs. The
John Cheevers
, the Updikes. Sure, Hemingway wrote about war early on, but later it was all love stories and leisure. (Raymond) Carver—same thing. And I thought: something's missing here. And I think it's missing purposefully. Sometimes in American literary culture, people say to me, 'Oh, you're so exotic. You have such an interesting life—you write about war and displacement.' And I say, no. My life is not exotic. It's actually very normal—very common—in the legacy of our species. What's exotic is to live in the suburbs and watch
Netflix
in relative safety. And I'm glad for that. Everyone deserves that. But it's still a very new thing in human history. Most of our species has experienced migration, displacement, war and tragedy. I'm not big on universality but if you were to press me, I would say death and war are the most universal experiences we've had as a species.'
5. Talking about universality, you have also mentioned that grief is endemic to this generation. Your readership is shaped by events from 9/11 to the pandemic, economic uncertainty and now the threat of war and AI. Why do you think grief has become so central to the millennial experience?
I think grief should have been part of every generation's experience but because of the lack of technology, it wasn't perennially present. If you look at every era, they've all been full of grief, death, and horror. It's always been violent. But now we have the internet. It's all more shareable. The images are immediate. It's easier to talk about grief. Grief and loss are in the room. They're in our phones. They're in our hands. That's never happened before. And I think that's a good thing because you can't hide now. Before, you could pretend none of it existed. You could turn away. But now, everyone—young people, older people—you can't ignore the fact that grief and death are part of culture and life. I actually think it's very exciting to see what kind of art will come from this more honest approach.
6. How will artificial intelligence shape the work of writers and poets?
Right now, AI is mostly replacing a lot of labourious work: etching, drawing, even writing. But what it doesn't have — which I think is the most important part of art-making — is historical context. When ChatGPT copied Hayao Miyazaki's aesthetics, why did the images look so empty? Because it lacks the aura of the original. Miyazaki's work matters because he was writing after the first detonations of two nuclear bombs on civilian populations. He was writing after fascism in his own country. His work includes blood, death, ecological despair, and war. But he uses a witty, whimsical aesthetic to tell those stories. That historical impulse — the desire to heal through art — AI can never replicate. It can only replicate labour.
7. Why do you believe we need more poetry today? What makes it different from other forms of writing?
Poetry is where language is most malleable. It's not beholden to story. In a novel, story and plot become like a weather system, which is why I organized my latest book in seasons. You don't have a say. It pulls you into a new day, a new narrative. Language in the novel is often captured by time. But in poetry, language is freed from time. And when it's freed from time, it can say anything.
8. Right now if you were to capture something essential about our times in one word, what would that be?
I think the word is earnestness — the importance of earnestness. Today young people are so afraid to, quote-unquote, 'be cringy.' And that's a catchphrase. But if you interrogate it, what they're really afraid of is being embarrassed. They don't want to try. Trying is no longer cool. That has a lot to do with digital surveillance — everyone is recorded, everyone is watching everyone else. I've never seen this level of conformity before. I was in London last year visiting my publishers, and I swear to you, I saw 20 young men all looking exactly the same. Same haircut, same outfit. So, despite all the independence that digital technology gives us, it has actually led to more conformity. Imagine getting this life, and all you do is avoid being cringy! Everybody just stands in line, afraid of being judged. Nobody tries, and then… you die. Then you've wasted everything.