"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 Grazina, 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 story of loss, hope, and how far we would go to possess one of life’s most fleeting mercies: a second chance."-- Provided by Amazon
"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 Grazina, 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 story of loss, hope, and how far we would go to possess one of life’s most fleeting mercies: a second chance."-- Provided by Amazon
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Find The Emperor of Gladness: A Novel Ocean Vuong in PDF, EPUB, ebook, audiobook, print, or library editions.
Find The Emperor of Gladness: A Novel Ocean Vuong in PDF, EPUB, ebook, audiobook, print, or library editions.
2 books in catalog
Contemporary poetry and fiction exploring trauma, displacement, and queer intimacy received widespread international recognition through the publication of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. Written as a letter from a son to his illiterate mother, the acclaimed debut novel established Ocean Vuong as a distinct voice in modern American literature. His writing blends poetic cadence with narrative prose to examine family history, war, and the immigrant experience.
Born Vương Quốc Vinh in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in 1988, Vuong spent over a year in a refugee camp in the Philippines before immigrating with his family to Hartford, Connecticut, at age two. Raised in a working-class household by illiterate family members, he developed an early appreciation for oral storytelling traditions. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at Brooklyn College and completed a Master of Fine Arts at New York University. While studying literature as an undergraduate, Vuong wrote poetry late at night while working in cafes and fast-food establishments, including Boston Market.
Vuong earned early distinction for his poetry, receiving the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship in 2014 and a Whiting Award in 2016. His debut poetry collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, won the 2017 T. S. Eliot Prize and was named a New York Times Top 10 Book. In 2019, he was awarded a MacArthur Grant and published his debut novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, which spent six weeks on The New York Times bestseller list and won the American Book Award, the Mark Twain Award, and the New England Book Award. He subsequently became a university professor while continuing his work as a writer and photographer.
Vuong's work frequently examines intergenerational trauma, exile, desire, and the enduring legacies of the Vietnam War within refugee families. Rooted in both oral folkloric traditions and formal poetic experimentation, his prose balances structural flexibility with emotional clarity. He frequently manipulates rhythm, line breaks, and sentence architecture to reflect memory and tension. His fiction bridges personal memory and social realism, drawing directly on working-class environments and food service labor to depict community life with accuracy.
2 books in catalog
Contemporary poetry and fiction exploring trauma, displacement, and queer intimacy received widespread international recognition through the publication of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. Written as a letter from a son to his illiterate mother, the acclaimed debut novel established Ocean Vuong as a distinct voice in modern American literature. His writing blends poetic cadence with narrative prose to examine family history, war, and the immigrant experience.
Born Vương Quốc Vinh in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in 1988, Vuong spent over a year in a refugee camp in the Philippines before immigrating with his family to Hartford, Connecticut, at age two. Raised in a working-class household by illiterate family members, he developed an early appreciation for oral storytelling traditions. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at Brooklyn College and completed a Master of Fine Arts at New York University. While studying literature as an undergraduate, Vuong wrote poetry late at night while working in cafes and fast-food establishments, including Boston Market.
Vuong earned early distinction for his poetry, receiving the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship in 2014 and a Whiting Award in 2016. His debut poetry collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, won the 2017 T. S. Eliot Prize and was named a New York Times Top 10 Book. In 2019, he was awarded a MacArthur Grant and published his debut novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, which spent six weeks on The New York Times bestseller list and won the American Book Award, the Mark Twain Award, and the New England Book Award. He subsequently became a university professor while continuing his work as a writer and photographer.
Vuong's work frequently examines intergenerational trauma, exile, desire, and the enduring legacies of the Vietnam War within refugee families. Rooted in both oral folkloric traditions and formal poetic experimentation, his prose balances structural flexibility with emotional clarity. He frequently manipulates rhythm, line breaks, and sentence architecture to reflect memory and tension. His fiction bridges personal memory and social realism, drawing directly on working-class environments and food service labor to depict community life with accuracy.
