Bishop Paul Barker
19 December 2025
Ocean Vuong. The Emperor of Gladness, Penguin 2025
In October, Radio National had a weekend of the best 100 books of the 21st Century. With thousands of others, I had voted for my top ten choices. This book was not listed as an option, which annoyed me. Having said that, it may not have made my top ten, but it would have come close.
Of the many books I have read this year, perhaps this is the one I anticipated and savoured the most. I had read Vuong’s previous book, On Earth We are Briefly Gorgeous and, unusually for me, his poetry. Having lived in Asia for several years, I am drawn to Asian writers and those of the Asian diaspora.
Vuong’s own story is moving. A refugee from Vietnam, via camps in the Philippines, he and his single mother were given asylum in the USA, where he was brought up in the USA in some hardship and poverty. He learned to read only at age 11. Now, in his 30s, he is an award-winning author and Professor of Creative Writing at New York University. His is an astonishing personal story and, understandably, there are autobiographical connections in this novel.
Set in a town called East Gladness, in Connecticut, Hai is a young Vietnamese boy who is preparing to suicide, jumping off a bridge. He is rescued by an elderly woman of Lithuanian heritage who is in the early stages of dementia. Hai becomes her carer, living in her house and gets a job in a fast food restaurant. Vuong has said about his book that he wanted to write about community among workers who stick at a lowly job for a long time. That, he says, is a decent thing. This is no rags to riches story, but it is a more common human experience. Hai’s life is far from easy, but that is normal for many. There is gladness even in the hardship and mundane, the everyday stuff of a human life.
I savoured this book because of its eloquent prose. The quality of writing is beautiful. There is depth and compromise in characters. Vuong is a Zen Buddhist, so this book is not Christian though there are allusions to Christianity here and there where characters refer to a Bible verse, for example. But the themes of war, violence, culture, refugee status and belonging, as well as being satisfied with the mundane, are themes for Christians to engage with and ponder.
Our world is full of extraordinary resilience in the face of hardship. Vuong draws us into hard lives, of resilient gladness.
In an interview, Vuong commented along the lines that good books, even sacred books are ‘porous’. They have hard front and back covers but the story escapes and lives and breathes. That image has stayed with me, and periodically in the months since reading this book, it has come back to me, porously dripping in my mind.
For more faith news, follow The Melbourne Anglican on Facebook, Instagram, or subscribe to our weekly emails.
