Ocean Vuong is a Vietnamese American poet, essayist and novelist. He is a recipient of the 2014 Ruth Lilly/Sargent Rosenberg fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, a 2016 Whiting Award, and the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize for his poetry. His debut novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, was published in 2019. He received a MacArthur Grant the same year.
Personal life
Vuong was born in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, on a rice farm. His grandmother was a young woman who grew up in the countryside while his grandfather was a white American soldier in the Navy originally from Michigan. His grandparents met during the Vietnam War, married and had three children, Vuong's mother being one of them. His grandfather had gone back to visit home in the US but was unable to return when the Fall of Saigon happened. His grandmother had separated his mother and aunts in orphanage, concerned for their survival before reuniting as adults. They fled Vietnam after a police officer had suspected that his mother was of mixed race heritage and in turn was working illegally under Vietnamese law. A two-year old Vuong and his family eventually arrived in a refugee camp in the Philippines before achieving asylum and migrating to the United States, settling in Hartford, Connecticut, United States with six relatives. His father abandoned his family after that. Vuong was reunited with his paternal grandfather later in life. Vuong, who suspects dyslexia runs in his family, was the first in his family to learn to read, at the age of eleven. Vuong describes himself as being raised by women. His mother, a manicurist, gave him the name of Ocean. During a conversation with a customer, Vuong's mother pronounced the word "beach" as "bitch". The customer suggested she use the word "ocean" to substitute for "beach". After learning the definition of the word ocean—the most massive classified body of water, such as the Pacific Ocean, which connects the United States and Vietnam—she renamed him Ocean. Vuong is openly gay. Vuong is a practicing Zen Buddhist.
Education
Vuong attended the Glastonbury High School in Glastonbury, Connecticut, a school known for academic excellence. "I didn’t know how to make use of it," Vuong said, noting that his grade point average at one point was 1.7. While in high school, he told fellow Glastonbury graduate Kat Chow, he "understood he had to leave Connecticut." "After spending some time at a community college, Vuong headed to Pace University, in New York, to study marketing. His time there lasted only a few weeks before he understood it wasn’t for him." He then enrolled at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, where he studied 19th-century English literature under poet and novelist Ben Lerner, and received his B.A. in English. He received his M.F.A. in poetry from New York University.
Career
Vuong's poems and essays have been published in various journals, including Poetry, The Nation, TriQuarterly, Guernica, The Rumpus, Boston Review, Narrative Magazine, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. His first chapbook, Burnings, was a 2011 "Over The Rainbow" selection for notable books on nonheterosexuality by the American Library Association. His second chapbook, No, was released in 2013. His debut full-length collection, Night Sky With Exit Wounds, was released by Copper Canyon Press in 2016; as of April that year, the publisher ran a second printing. His first novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, was published by Penguin Press on June 4, 2019. Writing in The New Yorker, Jia Tolentino sees the "structural hallmarks of Vuong's poetry—his skill with elision, juxtaposition, and sequencing" in the novel. Currently, Vuong lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, and is an assistant professor in the MFA Program for Writers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is a Kundiman fellow.
