“The Emperor of Gladness”

“Her preferred meal was the Salisbury steak frozen dinner made by Stouffer’s, the one that came with a tiny puddle of a brownie that congealed during the third minute in the microwave. Her EBT card had enough for them to have Stouffer’s about three times a week. … His own vice was Pop-Tarts, which he bought in a forty-eight-count box and stored in his room to be eaten untoasted and dipped in instant coffee.” (The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong, p. 39).

The Emperor of Gladness tells the story of two people: a very young man named Hai whose family is Vietnamese and an elderly woman named Grazina, whose family is Lithuanian. They live in a small town — East Gladness, Connecticut —where they have each come to live more or less randomly in a thoroughly American setting. 

The novel is complex and has many themes: one of them happens to be food. Specifically, the food that poor people, immigrants, and a variety of down-and-outs choose. They love what richer and classier people call junk food, and they love it because it tastes good and satisfies their hunger. (This just happened to be a theme that I discussed in a blog post a couple of days ago.) I think that Vuong has a message to his intellectual readers about how junk food is meaningful, not just convenient, for people who aren’t like them.

There are many other themes: the characters take many pills — too many; Grazina is struggling with senile dementia and has a collection of owl figurines; Hai is struggling with drug addiction as well as the realization that he’s gay; above all, everyone has a painful past, even Hai who is only 19 years old. The novel’s other characters all have their struggles too. However, in this blog post, I’m focusing on the food themes.

Hai and Grazina’s story begins with Hai standing on a bridge contemplating a final jump into a river. She sees him and insists that he come down, and she saves and then arranges his life. From that time on, he lives with her in a house in sight of the bridge. She even gives him a special name, Labas, her version of “Hai,” which means Hello in Lithuanian. 

Is he her servant? A caretaker? A charity case? Just a happenstance roommate? Yes. Sometimes one of these, sometimes all of them. 

Grazina’s house is a dump, but it’s a home. Poverty is the situation of just about everyone in the novel, but they don’t dwell on it. After Grazina takes him in, Hai gets himself a job at HomeMarket, which sells rotisserie chickens and a variety of side dishes, such as creamed spinach and mac and cheese.  “It looked like any other fast-food place: rubber mats on tiled floors, blocky steel appliances, fluorescent lights, all of it smelling vaguely of ketchup and used dishwater.” (p. 69)

HomeMarket is staffed by an array of sympathetic but unusual characters, including his cousin Sony, an autistic youth who is fascinated by the Civil War. Sony gets Hai the job. As the New York Times review puts it: “As at ‘The Office,’ one of Grazina’s favorite TV programs, HomeMarket is the stage for an array of diverse and daffy personalities: the 6-foot-3, buzz-cut female manager who aspires to the pro wrestling circuit; the diabetic ‘chicken man’ on the grill who looks like a portly Al Green; the foulmouthed Irish cashier whose son died; the nose-ringed drive-thru guy known as Russia.” (source)

The descriptions of the HomeMarket food slowly reveal that it looks and smells and tastes like home-cooked meals, especially like traditional Thanksgiving dinner — but it’s actually produced from industrially-grown chickens, frozen blocks of cooked vegetables, and other less-than-natural sources. Everyone’s favorite, the corn bread, is enhanced secretly with an extra ingredient introduced by one of the workers. “She buys vanilla cake mix in bulk from Costco, right? Then mixes it into the company corn bread recipe.” (p. 180)

Several favorite foods characterize Hai and Grazina. He loves Pop Tarts. She loves Salisbury Steak TV dinners and believes that carrots have healing powers. They are almost like a couple: “Hai sat sipping coffee and nibbling a Pop-Tart while reading The Brothers Karamazov, the worn paperback cover translucent against the words beneath. ‘What’s a samovar anyway?’ Hai put down the book. ‘Some kind of Indian pastry, yes? Jesus, I used to know. But that was a long time ago.’ Grazina scrunched her nose and removed her glasses.” (p. 292)

Another quote from the NYT review: “For sure this is a book deeply attentive to oft-overlooked populations and simple survival; Hai may be reading ‘Slaughterhouse-Five’ and ‘The Brothers Karamazov,’ but he’s living out of ‘Fast Food Nation’ and ‘Nickel and Dimed.’”

At the end, Vuong offers his readers a summary of the food-themes of the novel: “Our kind has built a box using four walls and a roof and called it HomeMarket, called it McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, Burger Chef, Subway, Panda Express, Pizza Hut. Centuries from now, when the cosmos are no longer mysteries infinitely multiplied by syllables, they will unearth the ancient and mildewed libraries and understand us as the epoch that reheated chemically preserved sustenance we never cooked under red roofs, from which we asked How can I help you? endlessly, day and night, through droughts and earthquakes, through wars and floods and assassinated presidents, fallen towers and allegiances, impeachments and suicides, through birthdays, some so insignificant they will be forgotten even by those they crown, knowing so little can be kept—not even the gnomic words that nonetheless birth the histories between two people: Hello, Hai, Labas.” (p. 480)

Here’s a picture of how I think HomeMarket would look. It’s a composite of several web images.
Rotisserie chicken can be very delicious!

Amusing cultural note: The review of this book in The Guardian (here) reveals the reviewer’s lack of understanding of American restaurant classifications. It refers to the Hai’s place of work as a “diner” — a term that is NEVER used by the author to describe HomeMarket. The word “diner” appears in the book only when the author means actual diners in the American sense. Cluelessly, the Guardian article is illustrated with an image of a stereotyped diner like one sees in museums and movies, something from the distant past. My American readers will understand what I’m getting at, and I’ve included the above image for those who may not be aware of chicken places as an American institution.

Book review © 2025 mae sander