MAGGIE ✧ > Recent Status Updates

Unfortunately gonna DNF this book. I’m a third of the way into it and I just am not interested at all.

Lowkey it’s a good thing I read Yellowface recently and watched Obsession twice because those pieces of media are holding my hands right now for this book. I wish I had read The Portrait of Dorian Gray before this too but oh well.

Thought I was bored but I sat up slightly because the scenes playing out in my head are combating a narrative voice that I personally think is lacking — we’ll see how this goes 🧘🧘🧘

Every man here is pissing me off

Thinking that this will require another read from me because right now, I just want to get through it and focus on the story and not my thoughts just yet (though I’m teeming with them).

Summer 2027 (re)reading? 🧘🧘

Our Captain’s treatment of women in general versus his mother truly calls back to the beginning where he claims his talent of seeing both sides, because I am simultaneously disgusted (e.g., Lana) and also empathetic (specifically when it comes to his mother).

I appreciate how Nguyen’s writing has such a distinct sardonic tone because it truly gets me through some of the grotesque things he describes (re: the squid???? 😭😭😭).

I feel like my LatAm professor from this summer would love this book because the prose reminds me of his

the last 71 pages,,,,, nuh uh. Why am I crying in a public library and why did Scott Street by Phoebe Bridgers start playing at the perfect scene bruh leave me alone 😔😔

something about Ocean Vuong is he’ll have a scene set in his past but also look into the future, like the way he plays with the ‘linearity’ of time in his works — EXQUISITE

A lot of meaning-making themes in this, god I love it. There’s something spontaneous and true-to-life about what Ocean Vuong writes

One of the things I’ve noticed about reading Ocean Vuong is that I can’t really annotate as I read. I just keep reading because his words keep carving and whittling images that build and build.

Chapter Twenty, you awful thing.

Holy shit. This genuinely might usurp Babel for me.

Chapter Thirteen, HOW DARE YOU, CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

the urge to read everything Kuang namedrops in here