Ocean Vuong Received Genius Grant from MacArthur Foundation

From the press release of University of Massachussette Amherst -

Ocean Vuong, an assistant professor in the Masters of Fine Arts Program for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, today was named a 2019 MacArthur Fellow in the Fiction and Non-Fiction Writing category.

Vuong, a poet and novelist, is the author of the current best-seller “On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous,” his first novel. The book was also recently long-listed for the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction.

The MacArthur Fellowship is a $625,000, no-strings-attached award to extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential. Commonly called the “Genius Grant,” the Fellowship recognizes three criteria for selection: exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishments and potential for the Fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work.

“The UMass Amherst community is extraordinarily proud to have Ocean Vuong among us,” said UMass Amherst Chancellor Kumble R. Subbaswamy. “The MacArthur Fellowship celebrates his emerging status as a gifted writer who is a major voice of his generation and a creative force.”

Vinh Quoc Vuong was born on a rice farm outside of Ho chi Minh City, Vietnam in 1988.  His family immigrated to Hartford, Connecticut when he was 2 years old. He did not learn to read until he was eleven years old.  He was raised by his mother, a manicurist, after his father went to prison for assaulting her.   

Ocean is an unusual name.  His given name  means to be proud / success but with the middle name Quoc, it means pride of a nation.  The New Yorker wrote about the origin of his new name as follows:

One  summer day at the nail salon, she told a customer that she wanted to go to the beach.  She mispronounced the word "beach" with "bitch".   The customer suggested that she use the word “ocean” instead. Upon learning that the ocean is not a beach but a body of water that touches many countries—she renamed her son.  Ocean Vuong is openly gay. 

• He is the fifth Vietnamese-American to receive the MacArthur Genius Grant.  Thong Sanh Huynh (Yale, 1987), My Hang Huynh (Los Alamos  National Lab, 2007), An My Le ( Bard College, 2012), Viet Thanh Nguyen (USC, 2017).