Writing takes everything out of Ocean Vuong. It’s expensive—on the soul, the mind, the heart. Yet he gave everything up to become a writer at the age of 20.
“I’m The Writer I Am Because I’m Vietnamese,” Ocean Vuong says.
Not just in story, but in style, imagination, and form—his identity shapes it all.
In a conversation on Have A Sip, ahead of the release of Time Is A Mother, Ocean Vuong reflects on how being Vietnamese has shaped him as a writer—where poetry, literature, and Buddhism intertwine.
There’s Buddhist influences in your poems—can you talk more about how Buddhism shapes your writing?
I think Buddhism (Phật Giáo)—shapes everything I do. Naturally, it influences my writing. One of its most important teachings is that all emotions are temporary, and that sadness and tragedy are part of life.
What’s interesting is that Vietnamese readers rarely ask me how I write about such difficult subjects. But American readers ask all the time: “How do you do it? How do you write about so much pain?”
I think that comes from a different cultural lens. In Vietnam, Buddhism teaches that life is suffering. We know it’s hard. We don’t expect ease—we try to understand suffering, work through it, maybe even transcend it. We recognize that darkness makes the light visible. You need one to see the other.
In America, that’s still perplexing. Suffering feels like something to avoid, to escape. But Buddhism teaches that suffering is inevitable—the real question is: What will you do with it?
For me, sharing pain brings joy. It connects us. When you tell the truth about how you feel, others feel seen too. You realize you’re not alone—and that’s Buddhism, too.
Writing, to me, is not just a craft—it’s a way of creating community. Not necessarily religious, but emotional, intellectual, human.
Your work seems deeply connected. Do you see this second poetry collection leading into a second novel?
I think we’re often taught—especially under capitalism, which I live within in America—that a book is supposed to complete a subject. That the front and back cover should finish and exhaust an idea, and the next book should move on to something entirely new.
So the books that I write are not boxes—they're more like conductors. They're like wires, building wires, so that the same energy can keep going through. And every book is made from a different material—it's a different conductor. And so each conductor has different ways to express the same energy. And so I don't think a book’s idea should ever be finished.
That would be the death of creativity.
If I ever wrote a book that solved what it means to be human, to be Vietnamese, to live in diaspora, to be a son, a brother—that would be the end of my work.
So yes, the next book will still explore those things, but with a different plot, structure, or form. And that’s true of most writers. We’re always writing about the same core feelings—love, death, loneliness, joy—just through different stories. If we believed those ideas were already complete, we’d have let Shakespeare have the final word. But that’s not how art works.
So the real effort is not in discovering new emotions—we already know love and death exist—it’s in building new architectures to express them. For me, I probably won’t write another epistolary novel—that has already been done. But I’ll find a new form to explore the same questions.
Nha Nam did an audio book for On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, what are your thoughts about this?
My only request is that it has to be a Southern accent—because it was written by me, a Southerner. It would feel just as off as if On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous were read in a British accent if it is read in Northern accent. It wouldn’t sound right.
This book is about power. And the Northern accent carries more power—just like the British accent does in America. It’s associated with class, respect, authority.
That’s why Melville’s Moby-Dick was so radical. It was one of the first major American novels to use American dialects, at a time when London still controlled all publication. It flopped—sold only 900 copies. Melville died poor. But now we see how revolutionary that was. Today, bookstores even use the whale as the symbol for fiction. Because that dialect broke away from the British literary tradition.
So yes, even hearing a Southern accent talking about something like guacamole—that matters. It might seem small, but it’s about authenticity and identity. And for me, the Vietnamese language holds a similar power. Instead of reducing everything to one standard, embracing diversity in dialect is a strength. Like in the U.S.—we have Southern accents, Boston, Ohio—each one with soul, with meaning. Even slang carries weight and tone.
So maybe we need multiple versions of the audiobook. But at the very least, it must include the Southern. Because dialect is power.
I’ll admit, the North is the most beautiful. When I hear the Northern dialect, it rings and flows like a river—fluid. But the South feels soulful to me because it’s home.
Do you have any expectations for your Vietnamese audience?
I don’t—because I’ve learned, in my short career, that every room I walk into, every audience, is different. So I don’t consider myself an expert. Writing a book is like going to the shore of a river, building a raft, putting whatever you want on it, and then sending it downriver. But you have to stay on the shore. If you get on that raft, you can’t make anything new—you’d have to destroy the raft to create again. So you stay behind.
All you can do is say goodbye to your book and let it go. And the beauty is, there’s total freedom for the reader. Another way I see it: a novel is like a room. You design and decorate it how you want, then you leave. You let others come in and live in it however they want. I don’t have any agenda. I don’t want readers to feel anything specific. Whatever they feel in that space is true and real—I have no right to tell them otherwise. That’s not my job.
I would say I’m the writer I am because I’m Vietnamese. Not just in the story, but in the style, the imagination, the innovation. It’s so important. That’s what I mean when I say Vietnamese made my English better. Speaking Vietnamese makes my English better than people who only speak English.
My Vietnamese is a superpower—it could never have been otherwise. And I think that’s something Vietnamese people everywhere, in Vietnam and in the diaspora, should remember.
View the full interview HERE.