FRom the pRL / originally written in English / C21ST / North America / USA

‘Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history’ – Plato

Introduction

Ho Chi Min city, then called Saigon, 1975. Communist forces entered the city and the Americans evacuated. The Vietnam War was officially ended. Years earlier, Ocean Vuong’s grandfather – a white American soldier – had a relationship with a Vietnamese countryside girl. They married and she gave birth to a little girl. After Saigon’s fall, Vuong’s grandfather, who was at the time on leave, was unable to return to the country and didn’t see his wife and child again. So began the fracturing of Vuong’s family.

Fast forward to 1988. Vuong’s mother, eighteen years old and working in a nail salon, gave birth to the boy who would grow up to write the line: “An American soldier fucked a Vietnamese farmgirl. Thus my mother exists. Thus I exist. Thus no bombs = no family = no me. Yikes.” While he was still wrapped in his baby blankets, a policeman visited the salon and became suspicious of Vuong’s mother’s mixed heritage. For many years after the war finished, children of American servicemen were vulnerable to discrimination. Vuong’s grandmother had already placed three daughters into orphanages. She decided the family should leave the country.

Eventually, two year old Vuong, along with his father, his mother, an aunt, and his grandmother, arrived in the USA, settling in Hartford, Connecticut. Soon after, his father disappeared, fracturing Vuong’s family even further. Vuong was raised by the three women, none of whom could read or even speak English well, but who had ambitions that their son would finish school. Despite his trouble reading, he toughed it out, and not only did he finish school, but found a place at Brooklyn Academy to study English. After graduating, he lived in New York where he wrote his first book of poetry, Night Sky With Exit Wounds, which he entered into competition with little hope of being noticed. To his amazement, he received an offer from a small Seattle-based company to publish. And the rest is history.

While regular readers of poetry know better than to equate a poem’s speaker with the author, in Vuong’s case, his poems are personal and confessional, exploring his family’s history, journey to America, his adolescence, his experience of being a young gay man in a homophobic environment, and his formative years as a writer. His fractured family history looms large over the collection which explores themes of maternal support, paternal abandonment, the effects of generational trauma, and of migration as a consequence of war. Vuong’s collection goes back in time to the fall of Saigon, and forward to the future (at one point Vuong addresses an imaginary son he’s yet to have), all the while using his profound imagination to fill the gaps and answer the questions of his life.

IB Student Learner Profile: Reflective

IB Lang and Lit Concept: Culture

Night Sky with Exit Wounds launched Ocean Vuong’s fame in 2016 and the book itself sparked various cultural conversations. A particular achievement of the collection is how it challenges certain cultural norms. The ‘hero’ of this book is not a traditional man’s man, for example. Raised by three women after his father disappeared, Ocean champions a different kind of masculinity: he’s a queer, Vietnamese-American immigrant. Many of his poems end with a call for empathy and understanding. Ocean proudly calls attention to a cast of supporting characters – many of them women or gay – who helped him find success and made him who he is. Reading these poems is a chance for you to consider certain norms of popular culture and question what ‘manhood’ means in the 21st century.

Through the Keyhole

“He was singing, which is why I remember it.”

Night Sky With Exit Wounds is presented in three sections, preceded by the poem Threshold. Although not strictly linear – poems jump backwards and forward in time – the collection follows a rough chronology; the poems in part one are taken from fragments of Vuong’s childhood memories and some are written about events before he was born. The shadow of Vuong’s absent father looms large over this part of the collection. In the introductory poem, Threshold, he writes about listening to his father singing in the shower. The sound of his father’s voice becomes the thread he will follow as he tries to fit his own fractured memories together with the stories his mother and grandmother told him. In Telemachus, a surreal and dreamlike poem, he finds the body of his father washed up on the shore, facedown in the sand. Turning him over, he tries to revive him. An apt metaphor; throughout part one of Night Sky With Exit Wounds, Vuong writes to resuscitate the memories of his father that have been fragmented by time and his long absence.

Learner Portfolio: Ocean’s journey

What is the narrative of Night Sky With Exit Wounds? What stories does it tell? What discoveries does Ocean – and the reader – make along the way? After you have read the poems in part one of the collection (or, preferably, finished the book) create a poster, diagram, map, or other kind of visual explainer illustrating the ‘journey’ of Ocean and his family, and the discoveries he makes along the way. Include plenty of images, symbols and quotations from the poems. Present your design or use it as part of a classroom display.

The Fall of Saigon

“Milkflower petals in the street like pieces of a girl’s dress”

In April 1975, communist forces entered Ho Chi Min city (then called Saigon) capturing it from the south Vietnamese and their American allies. American forces signalled the evacuation from Saigon by playing the seasonal song White Christmas by Irving Berlin over the radio. As bombs start to fall, chaos ensues on the streets of the city. Amongst the devastation of the siege, two lovers meet in a hotel room. A man removes a woman’s dress and tells her everything will be alright. Vuong conflates these two scenes, mingling violence and intimacy, intertwined with the lyrics of White Christmas, to create one of his best known poems: Aubade with Burning City.

Learner Portfolio: creative response

Transform Aubade With Burning City into a visual medium, such as a comic strip, film poster, artwork, or storyboard. How can you capture the visual quality of Vuong’s poetry? Present your design, and submit a reflection outlining your creative choices and the elements of Vuong’s poetry you were trying to bring out.

Reimagining the Father

“The last time I saw him run like that he had a hammer in his fist.”

In some ways, Night Sky With Exit Wounds is the result of Ocean’s efforts to reconnect with his absent father, an imaginative act that takes place in the pages of this book. Like Odysseus, his father left the family when Ocean was very young, leaving only fragmented memories and images of the man behind. Ocean’s father is a complex figure; on one hand he can be considerate and loving (in one poem he burns his violin to keep his pregnant wife warm). But he is a man traumatised by the legacy of the Vietnam War, and he struggles to keep his temper under control. At his worst he’s violent and abusive, behaviour that’s often directed at Ocean’s mother.

The two poems you’ll study in this section reveal both sides of Ocean’s father, the best and worst of him. Always and Forever is titled after a cute cliche and is something of an irony. The poem seems to be set on the night of his leaving the family. Before he slips away, he visits his sleeping son, sliding a mysterious tape-wrapped packet under the bed. It’s a gift for Ocean, one he should open when he needs his father again. But what is inside? In Newport I Watch My Father Lay His Cheek to a Beached Dolphin’s Wet Back recalls a day when his father, driving with Ocean in the car, ran to the aid of a dolphin who was stranded on the beach. In this poem, Vuong juxtaposes the tenderness and compassion for the hurt dolphin with the violence he’s visited upon his mother. The poem is interspersed with flashbacks to the Vietnam War, giving us glimpses of the traumas he had to endure and which he now tries to bury deep down inside.

Learner Portfolio: the complexity of Ocean’s father

Create a portrait of Ocean’s father as presented in the poems from part one (and elsewhere if you can) of Night Sky With Exit Wounds. This portrait can take any form you like: a mini-essay, a character profile, a mind-map, a collage, a picture with annotations, another idea you might come up with. Include words, images, descriptions, and symbols from the poems that reflect both his tender vulnerability and also the violence that simmers below the surface, occasionally exploding into action. Display your understanding of the type of masculinity that Ocean’s father represents.

Ocean’s Mother

“A woman on a sinking ship becomes a lifeboat – no matter how soft her skin.”

While much of the poetry collection concerns Ocean’s search for his absent father, several poems pay tribute to his mother, not least of which is Immigrant Haibun. This prose-poem is spoken in his mother’s voice as she voyages across the pacific on a boat to America while pregnant with Ocean. The poem paints a picture of his father, who travels alongside her, and ends in a beautiful haiku telling her unborn child of the sweetness of the rain, and how she doesn’t care if everyone forgets them as long as Ocean remembers. The Gift is a loving portrait of his mother and a thanks to her for teaching him the value of reading and writing. While she herself could not speak English, and was busy working at a nail salon to support her family, she persisted in helping him memorise his first letters: a b c. The gentle efforts and encouragement she shows are in stark contrast to the violence his father displays, and it’s clear Ocean understands that the writing journey he took would not have been possible had she not pointed the way.

Learner Portfolio: Practise for Paper 1 (Literature students only)

If you are a Language A: Literature student, at the end of your course you will sit Paper 1: Guided Literary Analysis. This paper contains two previously unseen literary passages. SL students write a guided analysis of one of these passages; HL students write about both passages. The passages could be taken from any of four literary forms: prose, poetry, drama or literary non-fiction. Each of the passages will be from a different literary form.

Here is a small pack of resources using Night Sky With Exit Wounds to help you work on your Paper 1 textual analysis skills. The pack contains three poems by Ocean Vuong, and one sample answer for you to read and discuss. No answer is perfect, so you might find ways you could improve or change this sample. All the passages are accompanied by a guiding question, so you can practice for yourself by choosing a different extract and completing this Learner Portfolio entry in the style of Paper 1: Guided Literary Analysis.

Exploring Sexuality

“You’ve lied about where you’re going you’re supposed to be out with a woman you can’t find a name for…”

Part two of Night Sky With Exit Wounds features several poems that are about Ocean’s adolescence. In 1990, he arrived in America with his mother, father, aunt, and grandmother. Soon after his father disappeared, abandoning the family, and leaving his mother to support the family. The themes of this section are varied, touching on Ocean’s loneliness, different relationships he formed in America, and his exploration of his sexual identity, realising he’s attracted to men. In Because It’s Summer, Ocean tells his mother he’s going on a date with a girl, but instead meets a man for a hook up. Both men are still young; perhaps this is Ocean’s first sexual encounter? Seventh Circle of Earth is written in the voice of a gay man who was murdered alongside his partner while they were sleeping in 2011. Ocean reimagines this event as a final moment of love and tenderness, crafting a redemptive scene out of something painful and tragic. And in Eurydice, one of the most challenging poems in the collection, Ocean returns to the mythological canon to evoke the anxiety and danger of being a young gay man in America.

Wider Reading

• Reimagining Masculinity (essay by Ocean Vuong)
• How I Did It (Ocean Vuong recalls how he wrote Seventh Circle, including the poem in its original form as footnotes on a blank page)

Learner Portfolio: symbols and motifs

Vuong is an incredible imagist, crafting beautiful and surreal scenes for his readers to visualise. His writing is also extremely symbolic. Objects, people, and places stand for themselves and at the same time they suggest more abstract ideas. Words and symbols are stitched like threads that run from poem to poem, becoming the motifs of the collection. Search through the poems you’ve read (and why not read one or two more as well?) and collect symbols that represent some of the following ideas. Decide how you want to present your work: make a PPT, a poster, a chart, or other kind of visual presentation.

Reconciliation

“Remember, loneliness is still time spent with the world.”

Part three of Night Sky With Exit Wounds offers a continuation of certain themes and the culmination of others. The loose chronology of the collection means these poems reveal Ocean as a young man. In several poems (such as Ode to Masturbation and Devotion) the poet resolves the doubts and anxieties of his queerness and comes to embrace his sexuality, expressing joy and accepting the pitfalls of love and romance. Meanwhile, he continues to search for answers to the question of what his father means to him, facing the pain the man causes (in poems like The Smallest Measure) yet acknowledging that he still yearns for moments of connection. To My Father/To My Future Son is an important turning point when he resolves to put his father’s flaws behind him. Speaking to an imaginary boy he’s yet to know, Ocean promises to be a different sort of man. He realises there are things he has not inherited from his father. All this culminates in the poem Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong, where the speaker addresses himself, offering comfort and reassurance.

Learner Portfolio: Practise for Paper 2

Write this Learner Portfolio in the style of a practice Paper 2 response. You can use one of the prompts below, or another prompt given to you by your teacher. Although Paper 2 requires you to write about two literary works, for the sake of this exercise you could focus only on your response to Night Sky with Exit Wounds, or you could try to compare your ideas to another literary work you have studied (visit this post for more help with Paper 2 ).

1. Examine the portrayal of difference (e.g. physical limitations, mental illness, race, class or sexual identity) in literary works you have studied.
2. In literature characters who have flaws are the most interesting. Discuss with reference to works you have studied.
3. Writers often choose words, phrases and names of characters and places not only for their literal meaning, but for further meanings that they suggest to the reader. With references to works you have studied, discuss how such words and their associations contribute to your understanding and appreciation of the work.
4. How do works of literature you have studied show that good can come out of destruction or violence?

Towards Assessment: Higher Level Essay

Students submit an essay on one non-literary text or a collection of non-literary texts by one same author, or a literary text or work studied during the course. The essay must be 1,200-1,500 words in length. (20 marks).

Once you’ve finished studying Night Sky With Exit Wounds, and if you are an HL student, you might consider using this text to write your HL Essay. Here are one or two examples of lines of inquiry suitable for this text – but remember to follow your own interests and the direction of your own class discussion to generate your own line of inquiry. It is not appropriate for students to submit responses to an essay question that has been assigned:

• How does Ocean Vuong craft images to suggest his yearning after the impossible in Night Sky With Exit Wounds?
• Throughout Night Sky With Exit Wounds, how does Ocean Vuong use language to reveal the intersectional challenges of identity?
• How does Ocean Vuong use free verse poetry techniques to explore the legacy of the Vietnam War on himself and his family in Night Sky With Exit Wounds?

Towards Assessment: Individual Oral

Supported by an extract from one non-literary text and one from a literary work (or two literary works if you are following the Literature-only course)students will offer a prepared response of 10 minutes, followed by 5 minutes of questions by the teacher, to the following prompt: Examine the ways in which the global issue of your choice is presented through the content and form of two of the texts that you have studied. (40 marks)

Night Sky With Exit Wounds could be a perfect text to choose when planning for your Individual Oral talk. The collection touches on so many themes and concerns that are encompassed by the Fields of Inquiry such as identity, community, values, imagination, creativity, and more. Once you have finished reading and studying these poems, spend a lesson working with the IB Fields of Inquiry: mind-map the poems, come up with ideas for Global Issues, make connections with other Literary Works or Body of Works that you have studied on your course. See if you can make a proposal you might use to write your Individual Oral.

Here are one or two suggestions to get you started, but consider your own programme of study before you make any firm decisions about your own Global Issue that you want to talk about. Whatever you choose, remember a Global Issue must have local relevance, wide impact and be trans-national:

Wider Reading

• Asian American Voices in Poetry – this collection at Poetry Foundation was curated to recognise the contribution of Asian American writers to US literature.