Ocean Vuong’s Unseen Stories Behind The Emperor of Gladness

Introduction by Ocean Vuong

When Oprah called The Emperor of Gladness a “heartfelt and powerful examination of those living on the fringes of society,” I wept—not for praise, but because someone had seen what I was trying to hold in words: the trembling lives at the edge of visibility. The child forgotten in a foster system. The war refugee who dreams in silence. The poet who kisses his lover only in memory.

These conversations are not just dialogues. They are offerings—testimonies from the margins, where grief turns to grace, and where silence, finally, begins to speak. You’ll hear from real voices, imagined voices, and those who’ve long left this earth, but not our hearts.

If you're here, reading this, it means you're ready to feel something brave.

So come closer. We begin not with answers, but with tenderness.

(Note: This is an imaginary conversation, a creative exploration of an idea, and not a real speech or event.)

Topic 1: The Loneliest Place Is a Crowded Room

Participants:

• Robin Williams – actor and comedian

• Sylvia Plath – poet and novelist

• Frida Kahlo – painter

• Jonah – fictional 17-year-old homeless teen

• Ocean Vuong – poet, moderator, and participant

Ocean Vuong:

We’ll begin with this:
“What does loneliness look like when no one sees it?”

Frida Kahlo:
It looks like applause echoing in an empty house. I remember after an exhibit, I came home, took off my corset, and stared at the ceiling until morning. People saw the colors, but not the cost. They loved the paintings, not the pain that fed them. Loneliness, to me, is when the world sees your art but not your body. Not your bones that cracked to make it.

Jonah:
It’s sleeping next to a plugged-in phone with no one to text. It’s eating ketchup packets and telling yourself it’s a choice. At school, I blended in so well they forgot to take attendance for three weeks. You think you're invisible? Try being absent and no one noticing.

Robin Williams:
I walked through crowds who knew me as Mork, as Mrs. Doubtfire, as Genie—but rarely as Robin. And the strange thing is, I loved them. Their laughter lit me up, and yet, it never quite reached the parts of me that needed warmth. Loneliness wore a thousand smiles on my face.

Sylvia Plath:
I stood in rooms where every word I spoke was poetry and still felt unheard. Loneliness is having your voice praised but your silence ignored. People read my work as if it were distant myth. But the oven was real. The gas was real. My quiet was not performative. It was pleading.

Ocean Vuong:
Loneliness looks like walking into a store and bracing to be followed. Or saying “I’m fine” so often that your mouth forgets how to shape any other truth. It’s not absence of people—it’s the absence of recognition. Like living in a house made of glass no one wants to look through.

Ocean Vuong:

Thank you. Now…
“What do you wish someone had said or done for you when you were most invisible?”

Sylvia Plath:
I wish someone had asked, not about my writing, but about my sleep. I wish they’d looked past the literary ambition and seen the girl clutching her knees at night, afraid she was already too much and somehow not enough. I didn’t want admiration. I wanted mercy.

Robin Williams:
I wish someone told me it was okay to be quiet. That I didn’t have to sparkle every damn minute. The truth is, being the “funny one” is a contract no one reads before signing. You're allowed to be broken. Someone should have said that—and meant it.

Jonah:
There was a janitor at my old school, Mr. Li. Once, he gave me a pack of peanut butter crackers without saying a word. That meant more than any sermon. I didn’t need fixing. I needed someone to see I was starving—in more ways than one—and not turn away.

Frida Kahlo:
I wish someone had helped me out of bed—not with pity, but with love. Not to say “You poor thing,” but “You powerful thing. Even here, even like this, you matter.” I painted not because I was brave, but because I didn’t know where else to put the ache.

Ocean Vuong:
I wish someone had said, “You don’t have to earn your place here.” That being soft, brown, queer, and poor wasn’t a collection of apologies I had to constantly explain away. I wish someone sat with me in my shame—not to talk me out of it, but to say, “Me too.”

Ocean Vuong:

One last question:
“What would you say to someone who is smiling through their own collapse right now?”

Robin Williams:
I see you. And I know how heavy that smile can be. Like holding a beach ball underwater—you push and push, but it keeps popping back up. You don’t need to be okay. You’re not failing. You're just human. And that’s already enough.

Frida Kahlo:
Stop pretending the wound makes you wise. It makes you human. That’s even more beautiful. You don’t need to perform resilience to deserve rest. Lie down. Cry. Be messy. Survival doesn’t need an audience.

Jonah:
Don’t wait for someone to rescue you. But do wait. That sounds weird, I know. I mean—wait for the day you feel like texting someone again. Wait for the sun to not piss you off. It will come. It did for me—once, when a stranger said “Good morning” like they meant it.

Sylvia Plath:
If you’re breaking quietly, please know: the quiet isn’t your enemy. It’s where the healing begins. Speak to the air if you have to. Speak in poems. In sobs. But speak. Your voice deserves to echo.

Ocean Vuong:
Let the collapse come. Let it break you open, not apart. Inside that breaking is a softness no one can steal. You are still worthy—of breath, of rest, of joy. Even now. Especially now. You’ve made it to this sentence. That counts.

Topic 2: Mothers Who Leave, Fathers Who Vanish

Participants:

• Viola Davis – actress and advocate, raised in poverty and abandonment

• Maya Angelou – poet and memoirist, lived with deep maternal scars

• Tupac Shakur – rapper and poet, shaped by his absent father and activist mother

• Rayne – fictional 16-year-old foster child writing letters to an unknown parent

• Ocean Vuong – poet, moderator, participant

Ocean Vuong:

Let me begin here:
“What does it do to a child’s heart when a parent disappears?”

Tupac Shakur:
It creates an ache that no record deal, no applause, no tattoo can cover. My father wasn’t there, so I had to imagine him into someone noble, someone worth missing. That’s the trick—when someone leaves, they still take up space. You spend your whole life arguing with their ghost.

Rayne:
You start asking questions no one wants to answer. “Why didn’t they stay?” “Was I too loud?” “Too brown?” “Too born?” You get moved from home to home, and every new door makes the last one feel like a lie. I don’t miss my parents. I miss the idea of them.

Maya Angelou:
When my mother left, I folded into myself like a letter no one ever opened. I stopped speaking—for years. People think silence is emptiness, but it’s full. Full of ache, full of blame, full of “why me?” And yet... I learned to fill my own pages. Eventually.

Viola Davis:
I remember the day my father left like it was a film stuck on repeat. No music, no warning, just a slammed door and my mother’s face turned stone. A disappearing parent doesn’t just vanish from your life. They vanish from your reflection. You stop seeing yourself as someone worth staying for.

Ocean Vuong:
When my father left, I told myself it was a sacrifice. That he was somewhere trying to become a better man. But years passed, and no better man arrived. The child in me still waits at a door that never opens.

Ocean Vuong:

Thank you. Next I ask:
“What would you have wanted from the parent who left—but never received?”

Rayne:
A letter. Even if it said “I can’t do this,” or “I’m sorry.” Anything. Silence is the cruelest language. At least a bad explanation means they remembered you exist. I just wanted proof I wasn’t erased.

Tupac Shakur:
I wanted my father to call me a man. To tell me he was proud. That I had value beyond my fire. Instead, I built my manhood on pain and rhyme. That can make you famous—but it doesn’t make you whole.

Viola Davis:
I wanted my dad to cry in front of me. To show that leaving hurt him too. He disappeared like we were nothing. Like love was disposable. I needed softness from him. The kind I only ever found in acting.

Maya Angelou:
I wanted an apology. Not a grand gesture. Just “I failed you, and it mattered.” I spent years thinking maybe I deserved to be abandoned. That kind of thinking takes root in a girl and flowers into shame.

Ocean Vuong:
I wanted my father to return with a story. To look me in the eye and say, “I know I left, but here’s what I learned out there.” I think I just wanted him to see who I’d become—and to be proud of the boy I raised without him.

Ocean Vuong:

Last question now:
“What would you say to someone still aching for a parent who never came back?”

Viola Davis:
That ache doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means you’re capable of love. You still long for them because you never stopped hoping. But let me tell you: hope doesn’t have to chain you. You can mourn the parent you deserved and still become your own home.

Rayne:
Don’t wait for an apology to heal. Most of us will never get it. But you can still write your own ending. You can still grow something from the rubble. I’m learning to be the kind of parent I never had. Even if it’s just to a plant right now.

Maya Angelou:
You are not the absence they left behind. You are a presence forged in fire. That parent may never come back—but you did. You came back to yourself, every morning. That matters more than they ever knew.

Tupac Shakur:
You gotta take that pain and build with it. Not just in music, or art—but in how you love, how you walk, how you refuse to disappear. You are the survivor of someone else’s silence. That makes you powerful. That makes you free.

Ocean Vuong:
You don’t have to forgive them today. Or ever. But don’t let their leaving be the loudest thing in your story. Write yourself into existence. Say your own name, over and over, until it becomes a hymn that heals the silence.

Topic 3: This Body Carries the War

Participants:

• Elie Wiesel – Holocaust survivor, Nobel Peace Prize-winning author

• Malala Yousafzai – education activist and survivor of Taliban violence

• Ai Weiwei – Chinese artist and dissident

• Buntha – fictional Cambodian refugee grandmother, speaks through translated letters

• Ocean Vuong – poet, moderator, participant

Ocean Vuong:

Let me begin with this question:
“How does the body remember a war, even after the war is over?”

Elie Wiesel:
It never ends. You can feed the body, clothe it, even give it peace—but the soul stays hungry. I still hear footsteps behind closed doors. Still flinch when silence stretches too long. The body forgets comfort faster than it forgets terror. I smile at my grandchildren, but my hands tremble when I hear trains.

Malala Yousafzai:
I feel it when I walk past schools. The ache in my spine isn’t just the bullet—it’s the memory of being told my dreams were dangerous. My body is stronger now, but it still braces when men shout. War teaches your skin to flinch before your mind understands why.

Ai Weiwei:
The body becomes architecture. When I was imprisoned, I counted seconds by watching shadows. I learned how to disappear without moving. Even now, free in the world, my shoulders hold the shape of a cell. People look at my art and see rebellion. I see survival.

Buntha (translated from Khmer):
The war lives in my knees. They bend not only from age, but from years of running. My ankles remember mines. My back remembers hiding rice in cloth. Even when I sing to my grandchildren, my voice wavers—not from age, but from sorrow stored in ribs.

Ocean Vuong:
I carry the war my mother fled from. I was never in Vietnam’s fields, but I walk like someone trying not to wake ghosts. My laugh is soft because I grew up knowing too much noise could mean danger. My skin has never seen napalm, but it twitches like it has.

Ocean Vuong:

Thank you. Next:
“What is the cost of survival when the world doesn't recognize your trauma?”

Malala Yousafzai:
The world likes heroes better than survivors. People applaud my resilience, but I often wonder what it cost me. I wake up with dreams that still smell like smoke. Some expect me to smile every day because I “won.” But surviving isn’t a finish line. It’s a beginning made of ash.

Ai Weiwei:
They want your pain turned into product. Protest into performance. I make art, yes—but it was never meant to entertain. It’s exhausting when people ask you to repurpose your trauma for their inspiration. They see the statue, not the scars.

Elie Wiesel:
There were years when no one wanted to hear about the camps. They turned away, said it was too much. But it was not too much to live through. Silence is its own cruelty. Survivors walk through a world that asked for their pain to be tidy. Trauma doesn’t come prepackaged.

Buntha (letter excerpt):
When I arrived in America, they gave me a job and a chair and said “You're safe now.” But they did not ask what I lost. They did not ask about the child I buried in a field before the helicopters came. I wash dishes and they call me lucky. I am not lucky. I am alive—and that is different.

Ocean Vuong:
When people see me smile onstage or read my poems, they often say, “You’ve come so far.” But no one asks how far I’ve carried my family’s grief. I’ve inherited pain I did not choose, but must still explain. That’s the tax of surviving—paying emotional debt in someone else’s language.

Ocean Vuong:

Final question:
“What would you say to someone who carries inherited trauma in their body and doesn’t know why they ache?”

Elie Wiesel:
Trust the ache. It is memory’s way of keeping history honest. You may not know the names, the places, but your body remembers. You are not broken. You are bearing witness. And that is sacred work.

Buntha (translated):
To the young ones who cry without knowing why—I send you this: It is not weakness. It is inheritance. The tears come from generations who could not weep. Let them fall. You are freeing more than yourself.

Ai Weiwei:
You may never find the source of the wound, but that does not mean it is not real. You are not hallucinating your history. The body speaks a language deeper than words. Listen to it. Even if the world tells you to forget.

Malala Yousafzai:
There is no shame in inherited pain. Trauma passed down is not a curse—it’s a signal. A way your bloodline says: “We are still here.” Learn to hear it, to honor it, and, when you're ready, to transform it. Your story does not have to end where theirs did.

Ocean Vuong:
To the person reading this, aching and unsure: you don’t need to prove the weight you carry. Some wars are invisible. Some scars are born without cuts. You are not weak for feeling too much. You are not wrong for not knowing why. You are living proof that survival moves forward—even if it limps.

Topic 4: Love Letters That Were Never Sent

Participants:

• Alan Turing – mathematician, codebreaker, victim of criminalized homosexuality

• James Baldwin – writer and voice of queer Black longing and resilience

• Audre Lorde – poet and activist, warrior for erotic truth

• Emery – fictional trans woman poet who never came out to her father

• Ocean Vuong – poet, moderator, participant

Ocean Vuong:

Let’s begin here:
“Why do some of the most important words in love go unsent?”

James Baldwin:
Because truth is not always safe. When I loved Giovanni, I wanted to shout it from rooftops, but silence was the price of survival. We learn to speak around the truth, not into it. That’s the cost of living in a world that punishes softness in men who look like me.

Emery:
I wrote letters to my dad every birthday after he died. I never mailed them—how could I? He died never knowing me. Not the real me. I told myself it would break him. But the truth? I was scared it would break me if he didn’t care.

Audre Lorde:
Because language fails when your body is not allowed. I could speak power in poems, but love? Love had to be coded. Hidden. Swallowed. Women like me—Black, queer—we lived in the margins of even our own sentences. Some loves are so sacred they become secrets just to survive.

Alan Turing:
Because sometimes love is illegal. I wrote him letters in my head. Pages and pages. But the law said my desire was a crime. So I solved puzzles for the world and let my own heart go unanswered. Not by choice. By decree.

Ocean Vuong:
I never told the first boy I loved that he saved my life. We held hands only in dreams. Real life was too sharp. Too loud. I wrote him poems he’ll never read. Because I loved him. And because love, for boys like us, often ends in silence.

Ocean Vuong:

Next question:
“If you could send one letter now to the person you never told, what would it say?”

Alan Turing:
I would say: I saw you. I remember how your eyes crinkled when you read scientific journals like they were novels. I loved you. I was terrified. I was condemned. But I would still love you again, even knowing it would ruin me.

Audre Lorde:
To the woman I kissed behind the stacks of the university library—I would say: Your fire still burns in my poems. You taught me what freedom tastes like, even if it was only a sip. You were not a mistake. You were my first truth.

Emery:
Dad,
I’m your daughter. I know you prayed for a strong son. I became a strong woman instead. I don’t need you to understand. I just need you to know I loved you anyway. Even when I couldn’t say it out loud.
–Emery

James Baldwin:
To Lucien,
You never knew, but I saw your sadness. You laughed like someone holding glass in their throat. I should have told you: “You’re not broken. You’re beautiful.” I let the world tell me I couldn’t love you. I wish I had told the world to shut up instead.

Ocean Vuong:
To that boy in Connecticut—
You said I wrote like someone who loved too hard. You were right. I hope you found softness. I hope you found someone who didn’t need to hide. You deserved more than silence. You deserved poetry read aloud.

Ocean Vuong:

Last question now:
“What do you say to the person out there who’s still afraid to send their letter?”

James Baldwin:
Your truth is not a burden. It’s a bridge. Maybe they won’t cross it. Maybe they’ll burn it. But you’ll still be standing. And that’s something. That’s everything.

Emery:
Write it. Even if you never send it. The act itself is holy. I became real to myself in ink before I became real to the world. You don’t need their permission to love bravely.

Alan Turing:
If I had written mine and sent it... maybe I would have known one moment of peace. If you can, let them see you. Let them love you or leave you, but don’t leave yourself unread.

Audre Lorde:
The erotic is not just sex—it’s presence. It’s truth. When you speak your love aloud, you reclaim power. Even whispered, even trembling, your voice is revolution.

Ocean Vuong:
To the one clutching that unsent letter:
Send it. Or burn it. Or fold it into a paper crane and set it free. But do not let it rot inside you. Love is too heavy to be buried alive.

Topic 5: What I Wish I Could’ve Said Before They Died

Participants:

• Anne Sexton – poet who explored mental illness, motherhood, and suicide

• Anthony Bourdain – chef and storyteller who carried the weight of unseen sadness

• Heath Ledger – actor known for depth, vulnerability, and inner battles

• Rosa – fictional hospice nurse who hears last words others never hear

• Ocean Vuong – poet, moderator, participant

Ocean Vuong:

Let’s begin here:
“What do you wish you had said to the person you lost, before they died?”

Heath Ledger:
To my daughter: I wish I had told you how hard I was trying. You were just a baby. Too young to understand depression. I wish I could’ve said, “None of this is your fault.” I hope the silence I left doesn't echo louder than the love I gave.

Rosa:
A patient once whispered, “Is it too late to be forgiven?” I held his hand, but I didn’t have the words. I wish I had said, “No. Never.” I wish every dying person heard that. No sin is stronger than the love we carry for them.

Anthony Bourdain:
I should’ve called Eric. Or Ottavia. Or even a stranger. Anyone. I wish I had said, “I’m drowning.” Not just joked around it, wrote around it, filmed around it. I was a master of evading the obvious. What I should’ve said? “Help.”

Anne Sexton:
To my daughters: I wish I had told you I loved you more than the darkness. I wrote poems that danced with death, but you deserved a mother who stayed. I thought I was giving you art. I wish I’d just given you my presence.

Ocean Vuong:
To my grandmother: I wish I had asked for one more story. You carried Vietnam in your voice, in your bent spine. I was too young to know that stories vanish with the body. I thought there’d be time. There wasn’t.

Ocean Vuong:

Thank you. Now this:
“Why do so many goodbyes come too late?”

Anthony Bourdain:
Because we lie. We say, “Next time.” “Tomorrow.” “I’ll check in soon.” But sometimes, we don’t want to check in. We don’t want to see how much someone’s unraveling, because then we’d have to feel it too. So we wait. And then it’s too late.

Anne Sexton:
Because we fear what love demands. Saying goodbye means facing the truth: that someone mattered, that they hurt us, that we hurt them. Avoiding it is easier. Until the grave makes silence permanent.

Rosa:
I see it every week. Children arguing over who should’ve visited more. Wives asking, “Did he wait for me?” Truth is, the dying don’t want closure—they want presence. Even five minutes. We delay not because we forget, but because we think we have time. We don’t.

Heath Ledger:
Fame doesn’t make you invincible. It just makes it easier to hide. I was surrounded by people and still fading. People assume you’re okay because you’re busy, successful, smiling. No one asked if I was okay. Maybe I wouldn’t have told them anyway. That’s the cruelty—goodbyes require both sides to show up.

Ocean Vuong:
Because language breaks under grief. You stand at someone’s bedside, or a closed casket, and suddenly words are too small. “I love you” feels too late. “I’m sorry” feels too thin. So we stay silent—and that silence becomes the last thing they hear.

Ocean Vuong:

Last question now:
“What would you say to someone haunted by what they never got to say?”

Anne Sexton:
Write it. Speak it. Whisper it into the wind. Your words still matter. The dead don’t need letters—but the living do. Especially the part of you that’s still waiting to be forgiven. Speak, not to bring them back—but to bring yourself back.

Heath Ledger:
You were never supposed to be perfect. You were just supposed to love them the best way you could at the time. If your goodbye didn’t come in time, maybe it wasn’t ready. That doesn’t mean you failed. That means you’re human.

Rosa:
Every time I hear “I wish I had said…,” I tell them: “Say it now.” I’ve had patients smile—mid-coma—at the sound of a loved one’s voice. Don’t underestimate the echo of love. Even if they’re gone, your voice still matters. Say it. The air remembers.

Anthony Bourdain:
You’re not alone. So many of us left rooms too early, left people hanging on our last text, last shrug, last joke. Let that guilt teach you how to stay now. To say everything now. Before the next goodbye comes.

Ocean Vuong:
You don’t have to punish yourself to honor the dead. Say their name out loud. Write the sentence you never finished. Light a candle. Cry. Laugh. Remember. But don’t let silence be the final word again. Let it be this moment instead. This softness. This breath.

Final Thoughts by Ocean Vuong

What do we do with sorrow that has no name? We gather. We listen. We let it shape us into gentler creatures.

Through every voice you’ve heard, through every wound reopened and every love left unsaid, one truth echoed louder than pain: we were never meant to survive alone. Whether it was a letter that never reached its destination or a goodbye never spoken, these fragments are still sacred.

If these stories made you cry, let them also remind you—you are still here. You can still write the letter. Say the goodbye. Or whisper I see you to someone on the edge of the crowd.

And sometimes, that’s enough.

Short Bios:

Robin Williams – Actor and Comedian

A beloved performer known for his boundless energy, humor, and deep empathy. Behind his iconic roles, Robin quietly battled depression and inner darkness, often masking pain with laughter that uplifted others.

Sylvia Plath – Poet and Novelist

A literary force known for her raw, confessional writing. Plath’s work delved deeply into identity, isolation, and mental illness. Her voice continues to resonate as a symbol of brilliance and suffering intertwined.

Frida Kahlo – Painter

A Mexican artist who transformed physical and emotional pain into visual poetry. Kahlo’s bold, surreal self-portraits revealed the vulnerability and resilience of a woman who refused to be forgotten.

Jonah – Fictional 17-Year-Old Homeless Teen

A quiet, overlooked youth who drifts through public spaces with nowhere to go. Jonah represents the voiceless millions struggling with invisibility, rejection, and the desperate need to be seen—just once.

Ocean Vuong – Poet, Moderator, and Participant

An award-winning writer whose work is rooted in grief, queerness, immigration, and survival. In this conversation, Ocean is both host and healer, guiding the group with quiet compassion and profound vulnerability.