Ocean Vuong

So you have to apologize for that breach, right?

Oh, I'm sorry, I'm going to go here, but I feel like we need to go here, right?

And you gave me such a beautiful moment of grace that I don't really experience in the spaces that I now traffic in.

But I think there's two types of shame.

There's the shame of who you are, which is ontological.

What does that word mean?

It's a big word.

The shame of yourself.

For queerness, many people shame us for ourself, our ontological presence, our being, which we cannot change.

And then there's the shame of action, of conduct, which I think can be really fruitful.

It would be great if a lot of our politicians felt a little bit of shame, right?

Because that means there's recognizing that you can act on it.

You can do something.

You can repair something.

And

So I think in many cases, so much of my childhood was about both of those shames.

The shame of being poor, which you had no control over.

Then the shame of being queer, which you have no control over.

And then the shame that what you're doing is not enough.

So the shame of action.