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Andrea Long Chu on Ocean Vuong’s ‘The Emperor of Gladness’

vulture.com · 5,347 words · saved by 1 readers

In his debut novel, Ocean Vuong took pains to be illegible, then blamed the reader for reading. In his new book, he is finally ready to talk.

The Romance of Being Unreadable In his debut novel, Ocean Vuong took pains to be illegible. In his new book, he is finally ready to talk. By Andrea Long Chu, Pulitzer-winning critic for New York and Vulture Illustration: Iris Legendre Illustration: Iris Legendre Ocean Vuong’s 2019 debut, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, was an epistolary novel addressed to someone who could not read it. The book presents itself as a series of letters written by Vuong’s alter ego, Little Dog, to his mother, Rose, a mixed Vietnamese child of the Vietnam War who never learned to read. Her illiteracy allows…

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