Ocean Vuong

Oh, thank you so much for recognizing what I'm trying to do.

It's a deep, deep honor to be here and to share with this beautiful audience all around the world about what, at the heart of what I'm trying to do.

I hope people realize that if they don't already, that a meaningful life is

It's not a life that you use to prove to yourself or others that you are valuable.

A meaningful life is finding the power and the value where you are.

A hundred percent.

And so much of language in our world and our culture has been captured to humiliate us.

If we look at advertisements, political campaigns,

If we look at emails, corporate messages, we're bombarded by language that tears us down and says we are not good enough.

We are constantly humiliated and debased in the way we experience language.

And the work of, I'm already getting emotional talking about this.

The work of poetry and language arts is to reclaim the strangeness and the beauty of language so that

the wonder and awe at the heart of it is recycled and reclaimed back to everyday use.

Language is a strategy that has always been historically used to control people.

And so when you realize that, oh, so much of this thing I use every day, when it goes into the hands of corporations and politicians, it's manipulating me

then you realize, if I speak and use this material with deliberate attention and intention, then I can reclaim a portion of myself.

And part of that is dignity.

And a lot of my work is, I'm interested in using language as a way to reconfirm self and communal dignity.

What does the word dignity mean to you?

The ability to...