Ocean Vuong

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.