I am touched by Ocean Vuong’s voice, even more than his writing.
The first time I heard him in an interview, I was surprised. He is one of the most acclaimed living poets and novelists in America today, someone who masters English with the precision of a neurosurgeon. But his voice is soft, mellow, wobbly, and sometimes even sounds almost apologetic.
My first reaction was, how did this man survive with that voice as a second-generation immigrant in America?
First time hearing his voice reminded me of someone else. A documentary, specifically. The one about Elizabeth Holmes. The documentary itself was fine, but what stayed with me was a detail one of her old acquaintances shared, that at some point, around the time she launched her startup and began moving in Silicon Valley circles, her voice changed. Her early adulthood voice gave way to something low, slow, almost artificially deep. It’s probably the voice of power, as Silicon Valley, and probably today’s America corporate culture broadly, had decided how power should sound.
Watching the documentary, I thought, that is ten times harder than faking an orgasm!! Faking an orgasm is a one-time performance, in front of one person, in one’s own bedroom. But our voices, like our irises and fingerprints, belong to no one but us. To hide it and perform another one, day after day, in meeting rooms and on stages and in front of others, is faking an orgasm in public, with the lights on, in front of everyone!! It is almost a slow self-erasure.
I didn’t think too hard about why she did it though. Not then.
Last week, I found you fidgeting in your room. You asked me why it’s just you, why everyone else doesn’t have to deal with this. I didn’t have a good answer then.
The following day on my way to work, I listened to Ocean Vuong again, an interview he had with Mel Robbins, where he talked about shame. And because of him, I thought about Elizabeth Holmes again, this time slightly differently.
He described a moment from childhood. His mother at a grocery store checkout, quietly counting how many plum tomatoes she could afford, then pushing two back onto the conveyor belt. He noticed the cashier and the people behind them look away in a kind of quiet courtesy. He felt shame.
Later, Ocean Vuong shared a moment of his mother apologizing to him for their family’s poverty, saying, “I’m so sorry that our family is so stupid we couldn’t make it.” His mother felt the same shame.
And yet. Ocean Vuong said it was from that moment that he formed an intention. He had never imagined becoming a poet or a writer. But sitting there, he knew he was going to take care of his family, because no one else could. The shame on that conveyor belt, the shame whispered beside his mother’s bed, became a propellant.
It was a more than one-hour interview, so after dinner that day I resumed listening. You asked me what I was listening to. I told you it was someone I had been thinking about a lot lately. We ended up talking about shame, which is a strange thing to talk about on a regular Tuesday night. But you asked what it actually is, underneath the word.
And I found myself telling you my own shame memories.
Years ago in Boston, I was laid off while on an H1-B visa. 60-day “grace period” to find a new employer or leave the country. My lease had just ended. Not knowing whether I would be able to stay in the country, whether I would find a job that sponsored H-1B, whether I would stay in the same state, I couldn’t renew the lease, which had to be at least one year. So I moved my furniture into storage, packed clothes into two large suitcases, put a wok, an egg pan, a few plates, and some cooking condiments into a cardboard box, and began living out of Extended Stay hotels.
To get the lowest rate, the trick was to book through Priceline Express Deal bidding on a weekday, selecting one week at a time, filtering for 2.5 stars with a kitchenette under $120 a night. That filter almost always returned the same Extended Stay chain. But the thing with blind deals is they give you a different property each time. So every week, on a weekday, I had to check out of one Extended Stay property, load everything into my trunk, go to work in my suit and heels, and check into a different Extended Stay after hours.
Each time I checked in I set my Michael Kors laptop tote on top of the cardboard box trying to hide the wok. Each time I would accidentally reveal it while reaching for my wallet. Each time I was certain the people behind me were staring.
Eventually I switched to a trash bag to hide the wok. One evening, dragging everything into an elevator, the bag tore. The wok hit the floor and rang out of the elevator. I was tangled behind my luggage, too far to reach it. The man at the front desk saw everything. He walked over, picked up the wok, set it on top of my suitcase, placed the handle where I could hold it, and pressed the elevator button. He didn’t say a word.
I ended up living like this for over six months. I managed to beg the new acquiring company to extend my employment for a few extra months so I could support the transition while looking for the next H1-B sponsor.
One winter night, at yet another Extended Stay, a fire alarm went off. I grabbed my down jacket and my wallet and forgot my car keys. I stood outside in the New England cold in thin pajama pants with no socks, shivering. A woman offered to let me sit in her car. I opened the door and was hit with a smell I will never forget. She had three cat carriers stacked in the back seat. The blasting heat made the smell almost unbearable. She mentioned something like she couldn’t keep her cats in any apartment she could afford. She was doing her own version of what I was doing. Moving between places. Getting through.
I was too deep in my own head to really see her. Why did I end up here. Why, in a state I had lived and worked for years, I was standing outside in the cold in my pajamas having forgotten my own car keys, feeling like a homeless. BTW many years later I came across Jeff Hobbs’s book and learned that hopping between hotels with no fixed address is indeed, by definition, a form of homelessness. I asked about her cats just to be polite. I nodded. I didn’t hear a word she said.
Those months were short, measured in time. But they have lasted longer in me than almost any other period of my life in the States. The shame from them is completely gone. What remains is something stranger but more useful. I can see those moments more clearly. They feel like what people mean when they say “defining moment”. The man who picked up my wok. The woman with the cats. Their faces are clearer to me now than many ex-co-workers I worked alongside for years.
I think this is what shame, when it is unexpectedly seen and quietly accepted, can sometimes do. In the moment you are most certain you cannot be seen this way, something shifts when someone sees you anyway and isn’t bothered. The shame then gradually loses some of its force. And years later, what’s left isn’t humiliation. It’s just a part of how you got here.
Elizabeth Holmes hid her voice. I don’t think she was only a fraud. I think she was someone who couldn’t sit with the shame of feeling not good enough, and acted on that, at real cost.
Ocean Vuong kept his voice. Soft, wobbly, sometimes almost apologetic. He walked into every room, every interview with it. And he became one of the most important writers of his generation.
I don’t know exactly how to stop the thing you are struggling with, even though I wish I could. But I know what you’re feeling right now is real. The weight of it is real. I’m not going to tell you it isn’t.
You asked me why it’s just you. I still don’t have a clean answer. But the shame of a moment and the meaning of that moment are almost never the same thing. Sometimes they end up being almost opposite. I didn’t understand what the wok on the lobby floor meant, or the woman with the cats, until years later. You don’t process it while you’re in it. At some point you turn around and it has become something else. Quieter. More yours.
Nobody else is carrying exactly what you are carrying. That’s the hard part. But it’s also where something comes from, eventually. It becomes part of how you move through rooms, what you notice that other people don’t. It becomes part of what makes you, you. And that person, the one being shaped right now by this specific weight, is someone nobody else can be.
I’m still thinking about your question. And I see you carrying it. I love you.
Stranger in a Strange Land 