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Ocean VuongVietnamese-American poet, essayist and novelist
Date of Birth: 14.10.1988
Country:  USA |
Content:
- Early Life
- Escape to the United States
- Education
- Career
- Personal Life
- Vuong is openly gay and also identifies as a practicing Zen Buddhist.
Early Life
Ocean Vuong, a Vietnamese-American poet, essayist, and novelist, was born in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. His maternal grandmother grew up in rural Vietnam, while his paternal grandfather was a white American naval soldier from Michigan. His grandparents met during the Vietnam War and married, having three children, including Ocean's mother. Despite marrying, Vuong's grandfather was unable to return to the United States after Saigon fell to communist rule. Fearful for their safety, Ocean's grandmother separated his mother and aunts into orphanages, where the sisters were reunited only in adulthood.
Escape to the United States
Vuong's mother and aunts fled Vietnam after police suspected his mother of being mixed-race and, therefore, working illegally under Vietnamese law. Two-year-old Ocean and his family eventually landed in a refugee camp in the Philippines before being granted asylum and migrating to the United States, settling in Hartford, Connecticut with six family members. Shortly after, his father left the family. Later, Vuong would reconnect with his paternal grandfather.
Education
Vuong attended Glastonbury High School in Glastonbury, Connecticut, a school known for its academic achievement. Yet, "I had no idea how to use it," Vuong said, noting that his GPA at one point was 1.7. While still in high school, he told fellow Glastonbury graduate Cat Chow that he "realized I had to leave Connecticut." After briefly attending a local community college, Vuong headed to New York City to attend Pace University, where he studied marketing. His stay there lasted only a few weeks before he realized it "wasn't for him."
He then enrolled at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, where he studied 19th-century English literature under poet and writer Ben Lerner, earning a Bachelor of Arts in English. He further pursued an MA in poetry at New York University.
Career
Vuong's poems and essays have been published in various literary journals, including Poetry, The Nation, TriQuarterly, Guernica, The Rumpus, Boston Review, Narrative Magazine, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. His debut chapbook, Burnings (Sibling Rivalry Press), was chosen by the American Library Association in 2011 as an "Over the Rainbow" pick for notable books featuring non-heteronormative content. His second chapbook, No (YesYes Books), was released in 2013. His first full-length collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, was released by Copper Canyon Press in 2016; by April of that year, the publisher had released a second printing of the work.
His debut novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, was published by Penguin Press on June 4, 2019. Writing for The New Yorker, Jia Tolentino sees in the novel "the structural hallmarks of Vuong’s poetry—his virtuosic use of elision, juxtaposition, and sequentialism." Paul Batchelor, reviewing the debut collection in New Statesman, notes the surreal imagery in Vuong's poetry.
In August 2020, Vuong became the seventh writer to contribute to the Future Library project. The project, which has been collecting original works from writers each year from 2014 to 2114, will remain unread until the collected 100 works are published in 2114. Discussing his contribution to the project, Vuong mused that "publishing is a lot about getting your name out there into the world, and yet this does the opposite, offering your future ghost instead. You and I will have to be dead to get these texts. That’s a dizzying thing to think about and write about, and so I’ll sit with it for a while."
Vuong currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, and is an adjunct professor in the MFA for Writers program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the recipient of the Kundiman Fellowship.
Personal Life
Vuong has described being raised by women. His mother, who worked as a manicurist, originally named him Bich. While speaking with a customer, Vuong's mother mispronounced the word "beach" as "bitch." The customer suggested that she use the word "ocean" instead of "beach." Upon learning the definition of ocean—a vast expanse of water, like the Pacific, which connects the United States and Vietnam—she renamed him Ocean.
