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When I lost my mother, I thought, there's no point. Everything I have done, I'd done for her. I went to school for her. She gave me no pressure. You … - Ocean Vuong
" "When I lost my mother, I thought, there's no point. Everything I have done, I'd done for her. I went to school for her. She gave me no pressure. You know, and it's important for me to say this because, you know, there's a stereotype of the Asian tiger mom. My mother was never such a mother. She said, whatever you want to do, as long as you're happy, you can do it. And worse comes to worst, she points to the desk. She works in a nail salon. She points to the desk beside her. There's always an empty desk in the salon. She says, you can sit down right here, and then we'll work together. So I had ultimate freedom to explore. And I think for me, you know, that freedom really was all to serve her. It was, how do I help my mother get out of the projects? Every immigrant has that dream.
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About Ocean Vuong
Ocean Vuong (born Vương Quốc Vinh; October 14, 1988) is a Vietnamese American writer, poet and essayist.
Also Known As
Alternative Names:
Vương Quốc Vinh
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Additional quotes by Ocean Vuong
The incredible thing that I can never quite understand was how they were able to kick them all out. The men had access to jobs, money, a patriarchal presence in the world, and even though they had troubles too, as immigrants and refugees, we come from a patriarchal tradition in the old country just as deeply rooted as in the west. In some cases, when men are talking to each other, women aren’t supposed to even be in the room. So that was what they were coming out of. And to think divorce?! These things were still taboo where they came from. And they all really did it.
The stories, at first, were folklore. My grandmother would tell a ghost story, then she would say: oh, that was after the napalm. So through cycles of these stories, that world started opening and as a child I would ask: what’s napalm? They ploughed on. It was almost intoxicating for them to create a mythology of their lives, because they were so powerless. They were all women. The men were gone; they did their harm and were gone. And they were empty hands, had no English, were powerless everywhere else. But when it was time to tell the story, they held everything.
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...you realize that grief is perhaps the last and final translation of love. And I think, you know, this is the last act of loving someone. And you realize that it will never end. You get to do this to translate this last act of love for the rest of your life. And so, you know, it's - really, her absence is felt every day. But because I'm becoming an author again in another book, it's doubly felt. And ever since I lost her, I felt that my life has been lived in only two days, if that makes any sense. You know, there's the today, where she is not here, and then the vast and endless yesterday where she was, even though it's been three years since. How many months and days? But I only see it in - with one demarcation. Two days - today without my mother, and yesterday, when she was alive. That's all I see. That's how I see my life now.
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