The Emperor of Gladness

Before we talk about the book at all: what did you make yourself to eat or drink while reading it, and did the book change your appetite at all?

Vuong writes the kind of sentences people underline. Find one passage you dog-eared and read it out loud to us, no explanation needed unless you want to give one.

The novel is full of people taking care of each other without being asked. Was there a moment of quiet caretaking in these pages that reminded you of someone who once did that for you?

So much of this book happens in a town that has clearly seen better days. Did it make you homesick for a place, even an unglamorous one, and what do you miss about it?

The fast food workplace becomes something closer to a kitchen table. Have you ever found that kind of accidental family at a job, and what made it feel like home?

Vuong lets his characters be funny in the middle of hard circumstances. Which moment of humor caught you off guard, and did it comfort you or ache a little?

This is a book about being needed. Without giving anything away about where things end up, did reading it shift how you think about being on either side of that, the one who cares or the one who is cared for?

Memory in this novel is slippery, and people hold onto stories that may or may not be exactly true. Is there a story in your own family that you have decided to keep believing anyway, and what would you lose if you let it go?