Ocean Vuong
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
But it was not a life that I thought I could afford in any sense of the word.
And it was something much more materially fundamental in that
I wanted to take care of my family.
I knew I was the only one.
I looked, you know, I looked long and hard at their life and I said, all right, they've been in the factories.
I mean, I went back to that moment with me and my mom at her bedside when I was 10.
And when she said, I'm sorry, we're so stupid.
That was the pebble?
I didn't know it then.
That was my, so it wasn't be a poet.
I say that to my students because we're in poetry class, right?
It gets too existential beyond that, right?
But for me, that was the pebble.
It was whatever I was going to do to take care of my mother and my brother and my aunts, that was what I was going to do.
And when I realized that I could take care of my mother
and be an academic and a poet, then that was when it was like seventh gear.
I became kind of ruthless in my pursuit of my craft because I knew it was something that would then support my family.
That was my motivation.
So now I say, oh, I was given that.
My objection was a motivating factor.