After his mother's death, Ocean Vuong wrote his way out of grief

Editor's note: This interview is a compellation of an in-studio conversation and a live event.

Novelist Ocean Vuong is one of the most celebrated authors of his generation. He's won a MacArthur "Genius" Grant, and his latest novel, The Emperor of Gladness , is a pick for the Oprah Winfrey Book Club. Still, he says, his large Vietnamese American family is nonplussed by his success.

"When I come home, I'm just one more of the litter," Vuong says. "Why should they care? Just because The New Yorker says what I do is valuable. ... Why should all of a sudden that value system be foisted on them?"

Born in Vietnam, Vuong emigrated to the U.S. as a child. He grew up in Hartford, Conn., raised by a mother who worked in a nail salon and a stepfather who worked at a manufacturing plant. He