Ocean Vuong

Born 1988

From Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam · Nationality: United States · Writes nonfiction

Quotes

“I think that might not have been enough, were it not for me being my family ’s only hope. Because they were also dying, in a different way: financially, mentally. And I thought, I can’t die. Literally I can’t die.”
On being surrounded by friends taken by the opioid epidemic and his quest to be
“When I really assess Western culture in how it grapples with other bodies and other ecologies of thinking, at the end of the day, my response is: please catch up. And I do mean – please – because we want you to catch up, we want you to be here, because where you’re at is a quicksand that’s killing you.”
On how Western culture fails to realize the interconnectedness of metaphors in “

Books by Ocean Vuong in the order they were published, from Burnings (2010) to The Emperor of Gladness (2025).

Authors readers of Ocean Vuong often like, from our AI-written notes

Viet Thanh NguyenVietnamese-American writer whose fiction also takes up war, memory, and immigration.
Garth GreenwellWrites intimate, queer, emotionally direct prose about desire and history.
Ada LimónContemporary American poet with a clear, personal voice on the body, nature, and loss.
Chang-rae LeeNovelist of immigrant and mixed-heritage experience, close in theme to Vuong's novel.
Carmen Maria MachadoWrites about the body, memory, and trauma in a way some readers connect with Vuong's work.