“I think that might not have been enough, were it not for me being my family ’s only hope. Because they were also dying, in a different way: financially, mentally. And I thought, I can’t die. Literally I can’t die.”

—  Ocean Vuong

On being surrounded by friends taken by the opioid epidemic and his quest to be the breadwinner for his family in “Ocean Vuong: ‘As a child I would ask: What’s napalm?’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/09/ocean-vuong-on-earth-we-are-briefly-gorgeous-interview in The Guardian (2019 Jun 9)

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Vietnamese American poet, essayist and novelist 1988

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