When there is kindness without hope

Every once in a while, you are blessed to read a book that has a profound effect on your life. It may not be the cosmic shifts that happen as a teenager reading The Fountainhead or The Handmaid’s Tale for the first time. But it’s an effect that alters you, makes you think, resonates so deeply that all you can do is emote. You laugh, cry, and feel all the in-betweens. And at the end, you are left wondering: What just happened? What beauty did I just read?

I finished Ocean Vuong’s The Emperor of Gladness last week. I immediately shared it with my book club without fully appreciating its impact on me. A week later, I’m still mulling over the book because of its stark depiction of reality. In listening to Ocean (I’m using his first name because I just love the story behind it. Non sequitur—Ocean was renamed by his mother after she divorced his father to reclaim her independence. She chose Ocean because, like the Pacific Ocean, they neither reside in the United States nor Vietnam. Ocean belongs to the ocean in between. What a befitting name for a poet) on the Modern Love podcast, I was mesmerized by how feeling he was—how raw his emotions were and how vulnerable he was to the audience.

After reading the book, I was confused. Most of the time, it is clear what lessons the author wants to impart to their readers. In this book, it was less clear. Perhaps it was in this confusion, in this not knowing, where the magic really lies.

One word kept coming back to me throughout reading this book: kindness. In each of the bizarre and strange situations that the characters find themselves in, the personality trait that comes through again and again is that these characters are intrinsically good people. When tested with their realities that include poor working conditions and pay in fast-food chains, drugs, crime and prison stints, and untreated mental health issues in the town of Gladness, CT, these characters, including the main character Hai, all exhibit kindness. It isn’t the type of kindness that comes with privilege, the kind that comes easily to those who have much. It isn’t the kindness that comes with strings attached or with an expectation of anything. It is the kindness that comes from only having nothing to gain- kindness that has no reward but for the deed itself. Kindness without hope. It is in these moments that Vuong’s poetry shines, and the reader is left with the gifts of the beauty of both the written word and the human spirit.

After listening to the Modern Love podcast, I am even more enamored by the author. He displayed such vulnerability, at many times brought to tears by a memory that resurfaced or a question posed by the host. While I listened to Ocean speak, I was overcome by a feeling that he is still processing so much of his grief for those closest to him that he has lost and not being able to repay the kindness that his loved ones had bestowed upon him. Maybe that’s the point of The Emperor of Gladness after all: kindness given authentically has no expectations. It is given wholeheartedly. In our materialistic and transactional world, it’s refreshing to be reminded of the values of integrity and compassion. And the irony just may be that when kindness is gifted in this manner, there can be hope for us after all. Thank you, Ocean.