Ocean Vuong Interviewed for All Things Considered

At NPR's All Things Considered, poet Ocean Vuong discusses his debut collection, Night Sky With Exit Wounds (Copper Canyon Press, 2016), preserving his Vietnamese culture in the U.S., and more. "When he was 2 years old, Ocean Vuong's family immigrated from Vietnam to the U.S. He tells NPR's Michel Martin that he didn't learn to read English until he was 11. Now 27, he's making his mark in the world of poetry."

Couple of the highlights:

On his mother naming him "Ocean"

She was working in a nail salon, and like many Vietnamese immigrants she learned English just talking to customers. One summer day she said, "It's so hot, I wish I was at the beach," except she pronounced it in a word that resembled a derogatory term.

And so the customer suggested, "why not ocean?"

When she learned what that word was, and what it meant — which is a body of water that touches both America and Vietnam, she decided to rename me Ocean. I always say that I come from a line of poets even though my family cannot read or write. As you can see, her mind was already a mind geared and keen towards the imagination.

On preserving his Vietnamese culture in the U.S.

I was raised in a one-bedroom apartment in Hartford. It was in a way a small village of Vietnamese women who raised me, so Vietnam was preserved in this American city — the city of Mark Twain, Wallace Stevens, Harriet Beecher Stowe. And here we are, a group of seven Vietnamese people speaking only Vietnamese every day — eating Vietnamese food with a little KFC sprinkled in.

Listen to the full interview (and find his poem "Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong," published last year in The New Yorker) at NPR.