In Store Now! In store now! Time Is a Mother by Ocean Vuong
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In Time Is a Mother, Vuong’s second published collection, a deeper vulnerability is revealed than in his previous works. Vuong’ description of how he felt upon finishing this book is telling of its deeply personal nature - ‘absurdly happy, content, utterly empty and full all at once’.
Despite this, his descriptions of the discrimination he has faced, the love he holds for his family, and his attempts at dealing with the passage of time after his mother’s death are far from unique to him. Vuong relates these experiences to readers with an agonising elegance, managing to showcase the complex nature of his emotions while still writing in a way that allows readers to feel represented in his language.
In detailing an array of life’s very worst experiences with such an exquisite flair, Vuong has crafted an anthology of poems beautiful enough to bring you to tears on more than one occasion. A truly unmissable collection.
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Time Is a Mother by Ocean Vuong
In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother’s death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Shifting through memory, and in concert with the themes of his novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the cost of being the product of an American war in America. At once vivid, brave, and propulsive, Vuong’s poems circle fragmented lives to find both restoration as well as the epicenter of the break.
The author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds, winner of the 2016 Whiting Award, the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize, and a 2019 MacArthur fellow, Vuong writes directly to our humanity without losing sight of the current moment. These poems represent a more innovative and daring experimentation with language and form, illuminating how the themes we perennially live in and question are truly inexhaustible. Bold and prescient, and a testament to tenderness in the face of violence, Time Is a Mother is a return and a forging forth all at once.
Order your copy today directly from October Books or buy online through our bookshop store and we’ll get commission on your purchase.
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