Ocean Vuong
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
there's people who feel comfortable here because they have been given this path.
Their parents gave them this path.
Their grandparents gave them this path.
That they were following a trajectory that was carved for them.
So of course they feel like they belong.
But do you really want that?
Do you want that path for yourself?
Because that's also the denial of your own creativity.
You need that kind of friction, that vigilance.
At the end of my semester, in every class, I have my students do something very simple, and I do it as well.
And you'd be surprised that many of them have never done it.
And what I do is I tell them,
Think about your intention.
Why are you here?
Why did you sacrifice so much?
And I tell them, go back to that person that first found this art.
The person who read a poem and said, just like Emily Dickinson said, my head is taken off, right?
And then...
decided that they want to do that for other people.
Write a work that transforms and affects people's lives that way.