![]() It’s an insulated privilege that doesn’t extend to other Asian Americans … to people like my mother, working in a nail salon.” When I walk into an event, I am Ocean Vuong doing a reading-I bypass some of the coded veils that Asian Americans are made invisible by, but only in that context. “But I’m not legible until my career makes me legible. “She could have looked in my file and seen that I’m an English professor,” he says, sounding almost amused. When he went to get his university ID at UMass Amherst, where he teaches, a white woman asked if he spoke English. Which is the central problem with how we value Asian American women.”Įven as a celebrated poet and author, Vuong knows he can rely on the privilege of being seen and heard only in certain settings. “I thought, Here we are again: I have to speak for you. ![]() In his voice I hear pain, but no shock: he and his mother experienced many similar moments after arriving in the U.S. ![]() When I came, with English, she went to the oncology ward,” Vuong, 33, tells me. “When she went herself, she got a heat pad. ![]()
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