The Emperor of Gladness

“The jacket once belonged to his friend Noah, a boy he met working tobacco when he was fourteen, the crop blooming verdant along the river that carved East Gladness in half. His real name wasn’t Noah, but that’s what Hai started calling him a week after he died. Because why shouldn’t the dead receive new names?”

Hai wears a jacket that was once his friend Noah’s, who passed away prior to the events of the story. This passage introduces Hai’s decision to call his late friend by a pseudonym, pointing to his propensity for fictionalizing or editing details of his life to help him cope with reality—a tendency Vuong uses to explore the theme of Storytelling and Make-Believe as Tools for Survival. For those who have read Vuong’s debut novel, this context signals a connection between The Emperor of Gladness and On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, in which Vuong’s narrator forms a romantic relationship with a young man named Trevor who, like Noah, passes away from a drug overdose.

“Sometimes, to be sure her mind was working the way it should, he’d check on her by asking who the president was. It was the question he asked his own grandmother, his bà ngoại, dead years now, whenever she had one of her schizophrenic fits.”

Here, the questions Hai asks Grazina to ground her in time and place and check her orientation also reveal elements of his past and family history. Hai’s use of this tactic, and the background about how it emerged, helps establish further context for his experience with mental illness and dementia. Grazina’s answer places the novel definitively within the time of the Obama administration—a conscious choice made by Vuong to reflect his own disillusionment with a government he hoped would achieve more (see: Background). The lack of real progress or movement made in the narrative arc is also a reflection of this disillusionment.

“He not only had a position in the company—but the company had no idea what his past looked like because none of that mattered. […] He had no history because one was not required of him, and having no history also meant having no sadness.”

Hai is overwhelmed at the idea of having found a new kind of community at HomeMarket, underscoring the importance of Circumstantial Kinship and Found Family to his growth. When he is offered a job, Hai is already keenly aware of the kind of bonds that are formed at a workplace, predicated simply on the employees' shared presence as they work alongside each other. For Hai, this dynamic allows him to belong in a community while avoiding his painful past—a key step in his arc from isolation to connection.

“After Bà ngoại died, his mother’s light dimmed, and seeing her shriveled in the corner of the couch, her head down and lit blue by her Game Boy, playing endless Tetris day after day, her hair thinning, he figured he had to do something. You lose the dead as the earth takes them, but the living you still have a say in. And so he said it. And so he lied.”

Throughout the book, Hai’s private monologues and dreams reveal his struggle with the pain of having disappointed his mother. Here, Hai reflects on how he lied about getting into medical school to bring some joy back into his mother’s life. Vuong’s plot emphasizes that Hai’s lies don’t erase his pain; instead, they only intensify it, as his mother’s joy and pride over his lies constantly remind him of what he has failed to achieve in reality.

“Because to remember is to fill the present with the past, which meant that the cost of remembering anything, anything at all, is life itself. We murder ourselves, he thought, by remembering.”

Hai’s bleak outlook on memory and the past reflects his most painful experiences—the things from his past that he finds difficult to remember, such as his grandmother’s and Noah’s deaths. As Hai helps Grazina through one of her episodes of dementia in which she’s unable to remember her present life, he reflects on how remembering is an act of “murder.” Hai’s reflection on memory in this passage showcases his desire to avoid the pain of his past, highlighting his readiness to engage in storytelling and make-believe to avoid his real life.

“Fealthy is what I call it. Fake healthy. They cut up two stalks of romaine, toss it into a bowl of mayo covered in bacon bits, and call it ‘conscious crisps.’ Don’t that make you wanna punch a toddler?”

Vuong uses Maureen’s disgust at Panetta to emphasize the illusory power of a brand narrative. HomeMarket sells itself as a purveyor of “healthy” food that tastes like it has been made at home. Hai’s discovery that the dishes that HomeMarket serves are also ultra-processed and factory-made, like Panetta’s, positions Maureen’s statement as ironic—HomeMarket, too, serves an illusion.

“Hai must have been sweating, because when Sony took his finger and started tracing something on his cheek, it felt slick and wet. ‘What you doing?’ Hai pulled back. ‘Just hold still. I’m writing something.’ ‘What does it say?’ ‘Okay.’ ‘Okay?’ ‘Yes. I wrote okay.’ ‘Why?’ Hai looked at him. ‘Because I mean it.’ Hai let his face say okay.”

Here, the quiet care Sony shows as he attempts to calm his cousin down provides an example of the strong, familial bond between the two young men. Despite not having seen each other for a few years before their joint employment at HomeMarket, Hai feels a sense of responsibility towards his younger cousin, who has his own struggles related to his neurodivergence. Sony, in turn, expresses loyalty to and concern for Hai, helping him get a job and agreeing to keep his employment at HomeMarket a secret from Hai’s mother.

“She broke the corn bread in half and bit into it, dabbing her lips with her apron, and handed Hai the other half. ‘The reason why it’s so good,’ she lifted her head, ‘is because it’s a lie. And incredible things can come out of lies. Just ask good ole Uncle Sam.’”

Maureen tells Hai the truth about why the corn bread at their franchise tastes so good: BJ mixes cake batter into the corn bread mixture. The corn bread—the bestselling item on the HomeMarket menu—acts as a symbol of the lies and illusions corporations sell their customers to make profits. Maureen’s assertion that incredible things come from lies points to Hai and Grazina’s tendency toward make-believe. Even though Hai’s adopted persona is a fiction, this lie evidences a deep connection between them.

“That’s when Hai woke and saw Sony’s face, stone-blue with sleep and moonlight, his steady breaths mixed with Grazina snoring nearby on the couch. It was Thanksgiving Day in East Gladness and Bà ngoại was long gone, along with that summer day so many years ago.”

Throughout the novel, Vuong uses flashbacks and memories to illustrate the relationship between Sony and Hai and offer glimpses of their lives growing up. Here, Hai wakes up from a dream in which he was back at a Stonewall Jackson museum with Sony, who had insisted the family stop on the way to Florida. The memory provides context for Sony’s obsession with the Civil War: He believes his father was a soldier during the Vietnam War, and he believes him to have been a “military genius” like Stonewall Jackson.

“‘And what happened to Marta?’ She stared at him hard and long. ‘Nothing.’ ‘What do you mean? Something had to happen.’ He sat up, suddenly needing the end of a story he wasn’t sure he wanted. ‘How can I know what Marta knows? Some things belong to those who lived them.’”

Grazina’s reluctance to speak more about Marta, who was taught to swim by a young man from the village, foreshadows the later reveal that Grazina was “Marta,” and the young man was Lucas’s father. However, in Lucas’s version, his father died on the front lines as a war hero. Like Hai, Grazina fictionalizes or edits details of her own life story to make her past experiences more bearable. In an imitation of this kind of storytelling, Hai tells Grazina about Noah later in the story, describing the two of them as soldiers in the war.

“‘I worked my ass off, fed you and clothed you all these years. For what?’ ‘I’m sorry your investment didn’t pay off. I didn’t know raising children was like throwing dice at a casino.’”

This exchange, in which Hai remembers an argument he had with his mother after he quit college and returned home, offers a glimpse into the kind of pressure and expectation that children of immigrants often carry. The sacrifices parents and families have made to give their children a new life create expectations that their children succeed to make these sacrifices worthwhile. In this context, Vuong suggests Hai’s failure to finish college is doubly painful—not only has he disappointed his mother, but his actions have deemed her a failure as well.

“In supermarkets, the meat looks so serene, placid, and calm, like something formed in a studio. Here—among Slipknot and the alloyed blood, breath, and gastric fumes bubbling from gashed esophagi, the grass dyed yellow with stomach viscera, these animals with faces so human, eyelashes blond and thick, so expressive it felt like they should have names, so much so that Hai had to look away as he pulled the trigger—the work was chaos.”

Vuong uses graphic detail to describe the violence of the slaughterhouse and the revulsion Hai feels at the experience. This use of language positions butchery as a metaphor for the exploitation of the poor within a capitalist system that privileges the wealthy and powerful, emphasizing The Precarity of Working-Class Life. Vuong’s metaphor serves as an indictment of the wealthy, who only enjoy the profits that come their way without actually taking a closer look at the impact of their exploitation on real people’s lives. Vuong showcases the violence and cruelty that exists in such exploitation through Hai’s horror at the violence of butchery.

“‘Don’t say that. It’s not a real spaceship. It’s just a scooter. Don’t make stuff up for the heck of it.’ ‘I thought you liked space stuff. Or is it just the Civil War stuff now?’ […] ‘I like NASA—the real kind, not make-believe like Star Trek. My mom likes make-believe, but I hate it. It makes things wobbly.’”

Sony’s obsession with facts and disdain for playing pretend frames his later investment in the legend of his father’s embedded diamond as ironic, underscoring the power of Storytelling and Make-Believe as Tools of Survival. When they’re young, Hai pretends a scooter is a spaceship, and Sony immediately rebuffs him. Sony’s firm assertion that he does not enjoy make-believe is in direct opposition to Hai’s character, who willingly and gratefully engages in storytelling to escape his reality.

“Hai shut his eyes until the sound of the ticking radio in the corner and the clerk’s wheezing dissolved, and through the shadow under his lids, Grazina’s head swam up to him, open and innocent as a lily, and he saw his own face reflected in her wide glasses.”

Hai’s internal conflict over whether to use the money he finds hidden away in Grazina’s house for Aunt Kim’s bail money evidences his character growth. Despite how desperately he wants to help his cousin, Hai cannot condone deceiving Grazina. Hai’s strong conscience in this instant is a sign of the growing connection with and responsibility that he feels toward Grazina.

“To be alive and try to be a decent person, and not turn it into anything big or grand, that’s the hardest thing of all. You think being president is hard? Ha. Don’t you see that every president becomes a millionaire after he leaves office? If you can be nobody, and stand on your own two feet for as long as I have, that’s enough.”

Here, Grazina’s perspective forms the crux of Hai’s character arc. Grazina’s assertion that being a “decent person” is an achievement enough, in and of itself, counters the sense of guilt and failure he feels at not living up to his mother’s expectations. Although Hai’s character doesn’t end the novel suddenly free of his depression or substance addiction, his transformation centers on learning to see himself as a “decent person” with inherent worth independent of what he may or may not achieve in his life.

“Hai considered Maureen’s multiverse. He wondered if there was another timeline where he was also sitting in a van in a parking lot at the beginning of a new year. If there was also a group of people waiting for a pizza after a long night of disastrous adventure. If wrestling and novels were merely the result of people trying to cast yet another universe where they’re the more heroic, patient, and capable versions of themselves.”

Hai’s acknowledgement that Maureen’s theories about the world allow her to deal with her reality in a way that comforts and reassures her reinforces Vuong's thematic arguments around storytelling and make-believe as tools of survival. Throughout the novel, Vuong echoes this same sentiment in multiple contexts, including novels like the ones Hai reads, BJ’s passion for wrestling, and Sony’s obsession with history.

“I want to know how he’s doing but I’m too scared to ask. Each time he comes we just talk about the war stuff he likes or he just goes on and on about this chicken job. […] I just…Why can’t he be a math genius or something, you know? Isn’t that what the illness gives other kids? Makes them some kind of prodigy? Something useful?”

Hai’s assertion that his cousin doesn’t need to be any different than he already is echoes Grazina’s belief in a person’s inherent worth. Aunt Kim’s confession that she wishes her son were more “useful” ties one’s worth to one’s productivity—a notion that Vuong pushes back against across the novel, connecting it to his critique of capitalist ideals and the exploitation of the working class.

“‘My mind only pulls in certain things,’ Sony went on. ‘Sometimes I want it to pull in something else. Like my counselor dates, or the names of people I keep forgetting, or how somebody is feeling about CNN or the Patriots, or Wayne’s windowsill garden he loves so much…my mom. Your mom. But those things don’t come over and choose me. They leave me out of it.’”

Vuong uses Sony’s description of his struggles with attention and perception to illustrate his specific neurodivergence. The scene in which Hai accompanies Sony to a psychiatrist visit provides additional insight into the ways Sony’s mind works differently from a neurotypical mind. Vuong's portrayal of Sony as a resilient and resourceful character, continually trying his best at whatever he attempts—from the job at HomeMarket, to his attempts at getting his mother out on bail—contrasts directly with his mother’s perception of him, pointing to an ingrained social framework that privileges neurotypical traits.

“No one in his life knew he had such a friend until now, until Sergeant Pepper told her. Somebody goes ahead and dies and all of a sudden you become a box for them, he thought, you store these things that no one has ever seen and you go on living like that, your head a coffin to keep memories of the dead alive. But what do you do with that kind of box? Where do you put it down?”

Hai’s use of his Sergeant Pepper persona to finally tell Grazina about Noah’s death entwines the concepts of fiction and truth, using the former as a bridge to the latter. Hai’s reflection here underscores the weight of the grief he has been carrying around with him, unable to talk to anyone in his life about Noah. Finally doing so with Grazina is akin to putting down the coffin and opening it up a little, lightening his burden. This moment evidences Hai’s growth and healing, signaling that he is finally beginning to process this grief.

“But Hai’s mind was snagged on something else. ‘You said to the nurse that your cousin was killed in the raids—but wasn’t it your brother?’ He studied her face, then decided to ask what he’d wanted to ask for some time. For weeks he’d had the nagging feeling she’d been embellishing a minor diagnosis into a pageantry of chaos.”

While Grazina unquestionably suffers from dementia, Vuong provides instances throughout the book where she engages in make-believe with Hai with a degree of awareness that she is acting out a story. For instance, Hai remembers old details that Grazina had mentioned previously that don’t add up, and wonders if she is exaggerating her symptoms. To Hai’s question, Grazina simply offers him an enigmatic smile, leaving the degree of her dementia ambiguous and pointing to Grazina’s desire for connection and camaraderie—this game of pretend with Hai has given her a way to find both.

“‘People aren’t so bad. They’re just wounded little kids trying to heal. And that makes them tell each other stupid stories,’ he said softly.”

The reveal that Sony has known about his father’s death and his mother’s lies all along links his experiences to those of Grazina and Hai. Here, he offers this perspective to Hai as a consolation, free of judgment or malice—people engage in these fictions as a defense or survival mechanism, and though lies can be hurtful, sometimes they do not come from a malicious place at all.

“Grazina, who’d been mostly quiet, went over to Sony and gently squeezed his foot. ‘This…’ she gestured to the forest, ‘is not new. It is same story. Okay? Don’t be too sad, boy. You still have your hands. And with these what you make is yours.’”

Grazina’s assertion acts as a reminder that death and loss are not unique phenomena but an essential part of all human life. Her reminder that Sony can still make things with his hands underscores the healing power that work and a sense of purpose can have, just as Hai discovers in the narrative. Caring for Grazina and working at HomeMarket were both essential to his character growth and ability to move forward with his life.

“He kissed her on her forehead, which startled her into a dazed stare. Then they just stood there—the only sound was the radio from the diner inside leaking through the windows, that and the immense swishing of the salamanders as they threw themselves, by the hundreds, toward the beginning of the world.”

Vuong introduces the symbol of the salamanders to highlight the existence of new beginnings, ending the novel on a hopeful note. On their last night together, Hai and Grazina witness hundreds of salamanders moving together to procreate, as the weather turns warm. The symbolism of the salamanders rushing to create new life underlines how, despite Hai and Grazina’s time together coming to an end, there are new beginnings in store elsewhere.