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Ocean Vuong’s Life Sentences | The New Yorker

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In his début novel, the poet tells a story of surviving the violence of America.

Save this story Save this story For many immigrants, the best-case scenario is that their children will never really understand them. Think of a woman from Vietnam, the daughter of a farm girl and a nameless G.I., who moves from a refugee camp in the Philippines to public housing in Connecticut. There she raises a son, who was born on a rice farm but grows up in the back rooms of Hartford nail salons, and becomes not just the first person in the family to attend school past the sixth grade but a poet who wins prizes and is hailed in major magazines. The mother cannot speak English, or read any

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