← Home
On Being · January 25, 2024 · 60m
Ocean Vuong — A Life Worthy of Our Breath (re-release)
Classic re-release. Ocean Vuong — Vietnamese-American poet and novelist — on language, immigration, the body as archive, and what it means to make a life worthy of the breath that sustains it.
This summary was generated from show notes and public descriptions, not from a full transcript review. Details may contain inaccuracies.
Canon
•
Vuong: for immigrants, the true self must be constructed in a new language. You can't translate yourself — you have to reinvent yourself. This makes the true-self/false-self distinction literal: which language's self is real?
•
Vuong: the body carries memories the mind has forgotten — intergenerational trauma is stored in posture, breath, and reflex. The gut-brain axis isn't just biochemical; it's historical.
Was this useful?