Kissing in Vietnamese

“Kissing in Vietnamese” is a poem written by Ocean Vuong, which appears in his first book, Night Sky with Exit Wounds (2016). Vuong was born in Vietnam, the grandson of an American serviceman and a rural rice farmer. When Vuong was two years old, his family immigrated to the United States following the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War. His work explores the lasting effects of the war on his family, the immigrant experience, and being a queer man of color in the US. “Kissing in Vietnamese” describes the particular way the speaker’s grandmother kisses her grandson on the cheek “as if bombs are bursting in the backyard” (Line 2). The poem explores themes of love, violence and the way trauma lives in the body. It makes use of metaphor, powerful imagery, and repeating phrases to depict the gravity of the speaker’s feeling and the grandmother’s lingering fear.

Poet Biography

Ocean Vuong is the grandson of an American serviceman and a Vietnamese daughter of a rice farmer. Vuong describes his grandfather as a “Michigan farm boy” who joined the armed forces to play the trumpet.