Oprah Winfrey has selected Ocean Vuong’s The Emperor of Gladness as the latest pick for her book club.
Vuong’s novel, published Tuesday by Penguin Press, tells the story of the unlikely friendship between a 19-year-old man struggling with depression and the elderly widow with dementia who convinces him not to take his own life. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus called the novel—his second, following On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous—“a sui generis take on the surprising and cruel ways violence is passed on across generations.”
Winfrey announced the novel’s selection on CBS Mornings alongside Vuong, and said she picked the book “because I thought it is some of the most beautiful writing I’ve experienced in my lifetime. I think it’s poetic literature, and I think that Ocean Vuong’s ability to capture the essence of ordinary people is like nobody I’ve ever experienced.…He’s able to show the mastery and the extraordinariness of everybody’s ordinary lives.”
Vuong talked about watching Winfrey’s talk show at the nail salon his mother owned in Connecticut when he was younger. “It’s such an honor to have her pick the book, because where I come from, working-class people, the act of reading can be very intimidating,” he said, crying and grasping Winfrey’s hand.
“Most of the clients at my mother’s nail salon were working women, single mothers who didn’t have second degrees, who only had high school education.…When they saw her book club [episodes], they would get up from the chair with a different posture. They’d say, I’m going to walk across the strip mall, I’m going to go to Barnes & Noble, I’m going to get that book. What she gave them was she made the act of reading accessible, and I watched these women feel so empowered.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
