Essay Sample on Kissing in Vietnamese by Ocean Vuong

In Ocean Vuong’s poem “Kisses in Vietnamese”, Vuong expresses his distress with generational trauma through comparing events of the Vietnam war to kisses given to the speaker by his grandmother. The poem is written in free verse and contains three sentences, each holding a different purpose. In the first fragment, Vuong describes the contrast of the serenity of his home to the violence of war. Then, Vuong introduces his grandmother’s stress of urgency to embrace her grandson in the state of constant risk. Vuong concludes his poem by saying that his grandmother learned her values of life from war. In this poem, there is an accumulation of similes, vivid imagery, line breaks, and word choice to illustrate how an individual gains trauma affected by the chaos of war.

Through describing his family’s experience in the Vietnam war, Vuong utilizes imagery and similes to build an emotional connection to his grandmother’s affection and her war experience. The poem is written from a second hand perspective, from the view of a young boy telling stories about a loved one in his life. In the first lines of the poem, Vuong characterizes the grandmother and a little boy in an eccentric way: "flames are making their way back/through the intricacies of a young boy's thigh...your torso would dance from exit wounds” (lines 6-7). The vivid portrayal of the scene describes the speaker’s perplexed feelings of anger and confusion. The utilization of optimistic language mixed with violent language depicts the speaker’s confusion of his grandmother’s past. The persistent turn of scenery paints the speaker's versatility as in human nature trauma is not precisely simple emotions. The speaker analogizes,  “as if somewhere, a body is falling apart”, “as if while she holds you", and "as if history never ended"  (Vuong  5, 16, 18). The purpose of this unusual comparison of something positive and something negative is to draw the reader’s attention to the connection between loss and love. The lines have a tone of urgency laced within which the young boy reveals to misunderstand as the narrator is using the subjunctive “as if”. The young boy explains them but he does not understand the feelings of his grandmother as he says them with uncertainty. The grandmother’s simple embrace to the young boy serves as a reminder of her desperation to protect her loved ones.When the speaker says, " she kisses as if she breathes you inside her....drops of gold into her lungs ( line 16).  She is trying to consolidate her grasp over her family, and protect them since she has gone through dangerous experiences before where she lost loved ones in war. The grandmother is clearly a brave woman who doesn’t want the young ones in her family from being affected by her traumas and tells her stories to encourage them to be strong.

Vuong also builds empathy on points of his poem using line breaks and word sounds. In the first stanza the use of harsh, frequent "s" sounds (kisses/bombs/bursting/lace) create a tone of urgency in the writing. The frequent line breaks in the first lines create enjambment such as, “as if bombs are bursting in the backyard” and, “where mint and jasmine lace their perfumes” (lines 3, 6). This pattern adds a strict emphasis on the contrast of the author’s two subjects; peace and war. It is important to note, when the speaker mentions his grandmother’s kisses it is not explicitly a gesture of affection but desperation and filled with heartbreak. For example, "when my grandmother kisses, there would be no flashy smooching, no western music of pursed lips" (line 10-12) and "she kisses....death also is clutching your wrist" ( line 16-17). The kisses are a gesture of someone who’s life is filled with traumatic experiences. The brutality and dangers of war causes families to gain a sense of fear. Vuong’s language and sentence frame criticizes the morality of war and teaches the readers the emotional impact of war on victims.

Ocean Vuong constructively uses similes, imagery, syntax and diction to teach his readers the traumatic impacts war has on families. The harmful psychological impacts resulting from the Vietnam War continue to linger and harm the people who lived through it. Vuong uses his writing to stand against the cruelty of war and encourage us to use our political activism to stand up against existing violence impeding against human rights.