The Emperor of Gladness

The Emperor of Gladness revolves around an unlikely relationship between a 19-year-old man with a host of personal struggles and the 82-year-old woman with dementia who saves his life and invites him to serve as her live-in carer. Through this unique context, Vuong explores the nature and power of circumstantial kinship and found family.

Hai and Grazina’s relationship provides an example of circumstantial kinship transforming into a found family. They come into each other’s lives entirely by chance, with Grazina spotting Hai on the bridge just as he’s deciding to jump. Vuong emphasizes the element of active choice that characterizes their continued engagement—Grazina invites Hai into her home, and Hai accepts. Grazina asks him to stay on as her carer, and Hai accepts again. However, their respective circumstances influence these decisions, with Grazina and Hai each choosing to remain in the other’s life not out of a sense of kinship in the beginning, but out of necessity. Over time, this circumstantial kinship transforms into a deep, genuine connection, with each of them as the other’s most important relationship in that moment.

While Grazina and Hai’s relationship is a connection born out of circumstance, his connection to the employees at