In ‘The Emperor of Gladness,’ Ocean Vuong explores chosen family and acts of kindness

Ocean Vuong:

It’s, like, impossible, right?

A lot of this country is founded on the nuclear family. And one alternative to that, you can say, is the found family, chosen family. But there’s a huge sector, I think, I wanted to tap into, which is the circumstantial family, the family at work, the family cobbled arbitrarily together during a shift.

And there’s an intimacy and bond and kinship there that actually corrodes ideology. We all had different politics. We came from different parts of life.