114th choice of the Oprah reading club

The latest choice of the Oprah reading club – this is the 114th selection – is the Ocean Vuong The Emperor of Joy. The new book of the award -winning poet that has become the most recent has just been released this week and follows “the cycles of history, memory and time”.

In this document, Hai, 19, is held at the top of a bridge on a summer evening, ready to jump, when the elderly widow struck by dementia, Grazina, told him to follow another path. Then begins the journey of the pair together, which implies that Hai becomes the guardian of Grazina and counting with him himself and his place in his community. In zooming out, we see what it means to live in the margins in America, and how loneliness, love and work are fundamental to this society.

“Ocean Vuong’s ability to (…) Take characters who have an ordinary life and give an extraordinary meaning to these lives make us think of our lives differently. He is a brilliant writer, a poet and a master of words. ” – Oprah