The Beauty of Found Family

One of the inherent beauties of literature and writing is the freedom it allows writers to explore different forms. Several writers have been pushing the boundaries of their oeuvre, with some first establishing a foothold in a particular literary form before venturing into others. Some writers commenced their literary careers as poets before writing full-length prose. Sylvia Plath, David Malouf, Rosmarie Waldrop, Anne Carson, and Rainer Maria Rilke are among a handful of writers who first established themselves as poets before eventually venturing into full-length prose. At times, this was a one-time endeavor, although their novels would be as revered as their poetry. Examples include Plath’s The Bell Jar, Carson’s The Autobiography of Red, Malouf’s Remembering Babylon, and Rilke’s The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Among the younger generations of poets-turned-novelists are Lang Leav and Kaveh Akbar.

Another renowned poet who eventually ventured into prose is Ocean Vuong. Born on October 14, 1988, in Hồ Chí Minh City, Vietnam, his family gained asylum and migrated to the United States when he was two years old, settling in Hartford, Connecticut. However, his childhood dream was to leave Connecticut—an aspiration he realized when he entered Pace University to study marketing. His time at Pace didn’t last long. Realizing it was not his calling, he left a few weeks later and enrolled at Brooklyn College, part of the City University of New York. There, he studied 19th-century English literature under Ben Lerner, who, like Vuong, is also a poet-turned-novelist. While at Brooklyn College, Vuong received an Academy of American Poets College Prize. He later earned an M.F.A. in poetry from New York University.

In 2010, Vuong published his first chapbook, Burnings. Another chapbook, No, followed in 2013, eventually leading to his debut full-length collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds (2016). His second full-length collection, Time Is a Mother, was published in 2022. His poems and essays have also appeared in prestigious publications such as The Rumpus, Boston Review, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. The year 2019 marked a pivotal point in his literary career with the release of his first novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. It was a critical success, earning him nominations for the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction, the Carnegie Medal in Fiction, the 2019 Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the PEN/Hemingway Debut Novel Award. Vuong’s debut novel was an overnight success, underscoring the depth of his writing and raising expectations for more ventures into full-length prose.

So on summer evenings, when summer finally came, and the full moon lit the fields so silver, you could squint and it would still look just like it did after snowfall. On those nights, Noah and I would run together through the tobacco, like this. And there was this mighty clear sky full of stars that made you stop and look up, you head empty as a ladle as you tried to locate yourself inside an immeasurable universe. And no one knows where you are and you feel, for a tiny second, that you have no parents, that they never existed at all, which is impossible and shameful to love, but I did. I loved that feeling.

Ocean Vuong, The Emperor of Gladness

Vuong’s long-awaited sophomore novel, The Emperor of Gladness, was released in 2025. At its heart is nineteen-year-old Hai. His story begins in September 2009, when he is standing on a bridge in the fictional town of East Gladness, Connecticut, on the brink of taking his own life by jumping into the Connecticut River. His best friend, Noah, has recently passed away. Hai has also dropped out of college in New York and is grappling with an addiction to pills. Having left New Hope, the rehabilitation facility he was attending, the future seems bleak. With his world on the brink of collapse, making his mother proud feels impossible. As all these pressures swirl around him, Hai is consumed by despair, convinced that ending his life is the only escape from the nightmare that has engulfed him.

Hai was in the midnight of his childhood and a lifetime from first light. As he drowns in melancholia, his reverie is disrupted by the shout of an elderly woman on the opposite side of the river. Cursing into the night during a mishap with a clothesline, she notices Hai and coaxes him to “wrap up whatever he’s thinking” and come down to join her in her decrepit riverside house. Hai complies. The woman—Grazina Vitkus, we soon learn—comforts Hai and listens to his story. When she asks his name, she misinterprets “Hai” as “Hello,” which translates to Labas in her native tongue. Hai later explains that his name means “sea” in Vietnamese—a subtle nod to the author’s first name, Ocean.

Through this interaction, we also learn about Grazina. At eighty-two, she is a Lithuanian refugee who fled her country during the Second World War. Together with her husband, she settled in the house near the bridge. Now a widow suffering from mid-stage prefrontal lobe dementia, Grazina was previously under state care, but her latest caretaker hasn’t returned. This prompts her to ask Hai to become her caretaker. He accepts. Hai picks up her groceries, administers her medication, and even bathes her. It marks the beginning of a heartwarming story between two virtual strangers from different generations—an unlikely pairing that becomes deeply complementary. Grazina has a son who rarely visits and has left her care to the state. In his absence, Hai becomes her surrogate grandson.

Shortly after adjusting to his new routine, Hai finds a job through his younger cousin, Sony, the son of his aunt Kim. He is hired at a local fast-casual chain restaurant called HomeMarket. Vuong immerses readers in Hai’s complex world. Hai is filled with uncertainties and relies on painkillers to get through each day. Coming from a dysfunctional family, he maintains a strained relationship with his mother, yet dreams of making her proud. The weight of familial expectation and his desire to fulfill it adds immense pressure. Enraged when Hai dropped out of college, his mother never learned the real reason. Instead, he lied about attending medical school in Boston, while in truth, he had checked himself into rehab.

Most people are soft and scared. They’re fucking mushy. We are a mushy species. You talk to anybody for more than half an hour and you realize everything they do is a sham to keep themselves from falling apart. From prison guards to teachers, to managers, psychiatrists, even fathers, anybody – even your stupid generals. People put on this facade of strength. They act like they have a purpose and a mission and their whole life is supposed to lead to this grand fucking thesis of who they are.

Ocean Vuong, The Emperor of Gladness

The Emperor of Gladness echoes several themes Vuong explored in his debut novel. Both Hai and Little Dong, the protagonist of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, are raised in dysfunctional families, particularly marked by tense relationships with their mothers. Interestingly, both have stronger bonds with their grandmothers. Hai’s family is plagued by secrets – a theme shared across both books. The intersection of Grazina and Hai becomes all the more moving in this context: both are rejected by their families yet manage to form a deeply human bond. The novel underscores the beauty of found families. Initially born out of necessity, their relationship grows into one of kinship and mutual care. At their lowest – Hai on the verge of giving up and Grazina losing her memory – they find refuge in each other.

Memory plays an integral role in the novel, emphasized by Grazina’s dementia. Her fading memory leads to random hallucinatory episodes, taking her back to her teenage years in war-ravaged Lithuania, besieged by both Nazi and Soviet forces. During these episodes, Hai instinctively joins her. This was a technique Hai perfected from dealing with his schizophrenic grandmother. Despite his meager knowledge about the war, he pretends to be an American infantryman named Sergeant Pepper who guides Grazina to safety. Despite the passage of time, Grazina still carries the trauma of war. Trauma, indeed, is another central theme. Hai suffers from his own: grief from losing loved ones to overdose and pain from unresolved familial tensions. Hai escapes from his traumas through pills.

With history playing a prominent role, the legacy of war is explored through Grazina’s hallucinations. Hai, too, belongs to a family with ties to war. Sony, Hai’s cousin, adds further historical weight. Sony was neurodivergent, born with hydrocephalus. This affliction made his mother believe that he was mentally handicapped. The novel subtly underscores mental health. Sony grew up with a fascination with history; his knowledge of the Civil War was didactic. His obsession with the Civil War was his lens for understanding and processing family trauma. Like his cousin, Sony also has a complicated relationship with his mother, Kim, who was in jail.. Sony is working to save enough money to bail her out. Both Hai and Sony will find another family in their co-workers at HomeMarket.

Hai’s turmoil is further rooted in questions of sexuality and identity. As the story progresses, Hai’s homosexual identity is unraveled. Noah was his lover, and his death left a gaping hole in his life. He becomes romantically involved with a HomeMarket regular, yet Noah remains central to Hai’s emotional journey. However, this is an aspect of his life he obscures from his family. He was raised in a family in a conservative society, prompting him to keep his sexuality hidden lest he be doused in shame and disgrace. This created a chasm between him and his family, contributing to his estrangement from his mother. This estrangement was also a catalyst in his growing sense of loneliness, an experience he shares with the members of the LGBTQIA+ community who are still closeted.

But where was she going? She was going to a place where freedom is promised yet made possible only by a contained egalitarian space fashioned with walls and locks, where measured nourishment is delivered each day through long corridors by staff born from a never-ending elsewhere who forgo watching their own children grow up in order to watch strangers grow old, all this to keep you alive so they can suck up money from your bank account while you’re warm, immobilized by tranquilizers, and satiated and numb, a body ripe for harvest even beyond ripening. She was heading to America after all. The truest version of it. The one where everyone pays to be here.

Ocean Vuong, The Emperor of Gladness

Beyond memory, history, and homosexuality, The Emperor of Gladness is a vivid portrait of contemporary America. With its overgrown lawns and shuttered businesses, East Gladness is the microcosm of working-class and suburban America. It is a small and often overlooked town, living in the shadow of more prosperous areas. The divide between the past and the present is blurred, and its populace is a mix of working-class and immigrant families. However, the denizens are more often than not invisible. It is filled with tired castaways. The town was also bereft of a sense of real community. There is hardly any local pride, although the locals are full of grit, a simulacrum it shares with other forgotten American towns – unique but unimpressive.

The novel is also a homage and an indictment of the American work culture. HomeMarket, for Hai, turns into a safe haven with its array of misfits. There is a silent dignity in the camaraderie formed amongst Hai and his fellow workers. They banter and share their struggles, providing each other a sense of purpose and community. However, this belies the exploitation of the working class. The compensation they receive is meager, not commensurate with the grueling labor their work requires. There is no security of tenure as the crew faces layoffs and corporate pressure. Meanwhile, the local abattoir confronts the ugly realities of meat production. As the characters witness this brutality, they are prompted to confront their own complicity. These are allusions to the proverbial American Dream.

Vuong weaves all these themes into a lush tapestry through his lyrical prose. His poetic background is evident in the natural flow of his language. It’s fascinating how seamlessly he integrates poetry into narrative. Amid a range of subjects, Vuong celebrates the power of language and poetry while also highlighting the eloquence of silence. He gives even the most minor characters a sense of depth, reminding readers that we are all background characters in someone else’s story. As one wades through the novel’s layers, a hidden love letter to those who live simply to survive each day is revealed.

Overall, The Emperor of Gladness is multilayered and multifaceted. On the surface, it is the story of two strangers from different generations who converge at a pivotal moment in their lives. Initially based on necessity, their relationship evolves into one of genuine connection. The novel explores the beauty of found and chosen families – in homes and workplaces – as an antidote to the dysfunction from which the characters come. Vuong deftly weaves themes of history, memory, war, trauma, grief, mental health, identity, queerness, immigration, and the human condition. Building from strength to strength, Vuong, in his sophomore novel, continues to fulfill his promise as one of the most compelling literary voices of our time.

How strange to feel something so close to mercy, whatever that was, and stranger still that it should be found here of all places, at the end of a road of ruined house by a toxic river. That among a pile of salvaged trash, he would come closest to all he ever wanted to be: a consciousness sitting under a lightbulb reading his days away, warm and alone, alone and yet, somehow, still somebody’s son.

Ocean Vuong, The Emperor of Gladness
Book Specs

Author: Ocean Vuong
Publisher: Penguin Press
Publishing Date: 2025
Number of Pages: 397
Genre: Literary, Bildungsroman, LGBTQIA+

Synopsis

One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Garzina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to transform Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community on the brink.

Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul. Hallmarks of Ocean Vuong’s writing – formal innovation, syntactic dexterity, and the ability to twin grit with grace through tenderness – are on full display in this bighearted story of chosen family, unexpected friendship, and how far we would go to possess one of life’s most fleeting mercies: a second chance.

About the Author

To learn more about Ocean Vuong, click here.