The Emperor of Gladness Study Guide

Ocean Vuong was born to a multiracial mother in Vietnam. At 18, just after giving birth to Vuong, his mother was forced to flee Vietnam, along with the rest of her family, and took refuge in the Philippines. When Vuong was two years old, his family immigrated to the United States, settling in Connecticut. Vuong became literate at the age of 11, the first of his family to do so, and went on to attend an academically prestigious high school. Later, due to his desire to leave Connecticut, he briefly attended Pace University in New York City before dropping out only a few weeks into the semester. He then attended Brooklyn College, studying English, and went on to earn a master’s degree from New York University. His first published work was a chapbook of poetry called Burnings. His debut novel was published in 2019, titled On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. Vuong is openly gay and is a practicing Buddhist. He currently works as a creative writing professor at New York University.

Underlying The Emperor of Gladness’s narrative is a seemingly endless sequence of global military conflicts. Grazina is a survivor of World War II, having lived in a Soviet-occupied Lithuania that was later occupied by the German military in 1941. Her hopes for America are thus colored by her experience with both of these regimes as, in comparison to her blatantly oppressive experiences, the supposed American dream seems like a world of change from her life under war. Similarly, Hai’s family immigrated from Vietnam to America following the Vietnam War. This war, one fought between North and South Vietnam along with their allies (with one of the South’s allies being America), was incredibly and overwhelmingly violent, wreaking havoc on Vietnamese populations. Like Grazina, Hai’s family fled to the U.S. in hopes of finding peace and stability. Finally, Vuong makes many passing mentions of the contemporary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, two lengthy, U.S.-led armed conflicts. Also important to the novel is the Opioid overdose crisis, which has plagued America since the turn of the century. Opioids, the same drugs that Hai is addicted to, became more commonly abused after an increase in prescribing such medications; this abuse more heavily affects impoverished communities, adding to Vuong’s commentary on the neglect of the lower classes. Finally, this novel occurs in the wake of the Great Recession, a period of massive decline for global economies starting in 2007. This recession left many unemployed, leading to massive rates of poverty. The characters in the novel are still feeling the aftermath of the recession.

Like The Emperor of Gladness, Vuong’s novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous explores the subjects of immigration, race, fraught familial bonds, and grief. His poetry collections, Night Sky with Exit Wounds and Time is a Mother, explore similar topics, albeit in a different genre; additionally, his poetry is often abstract and non-linear, which parallels his flexible understanding of time in this novel. Aside from Vuong’s work, many other contemporary novelists tackle similar subjects. Kaveh Akbar’s novel Martyr! follows a queer Iranian American as he comes to terms with his addiction, death, and his unstable relationship with his mother. Natasha Brown’s novel Assembly follows a Black British woman as she grapples with systemic racism, the pressures of capitalism, and mortality in the wake of her cancer diagnosis. Both books explore similar themes as The Emperor of Gladness, and Assembly, which also has a non-linear structure and relies heavily on ambiguity, parallels Vuong’s stylistic choices.