RaveThe Adroit JournalA bold and remarkable novel that captures the hopes and disillusionments of people living in today’s America ... Compared with Vuong’s first novel, On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous, the storytelling in The Emperor of Gladness dwells more on the present than the past, centering on the characters rather than any single subjectivity, bringing us back to humanity through the resilience and hope of his protagonists.
Nina Mingya Powles
PositiveAsian Review of BooksTinged with feelings of guilt, the speaker explores in metaphorical terms the symptom of a society deeply entrenched in consumerism, and the individual’s potential threat to the environment...Through its inventive forms and a richly textured and nuanced language, Magnolia is an impressive, eloquent debut collection that offers multiple layers of meaning about home, identity, language and womanhood...With an assured, imaginative voice that embraces multilingual expressions and hybridity of forms, Powles reveals the convergence and gaps that exist between the personal and the universal, the authentic and the foreign, and a willingness to translate one’s complex, multicultural identity into being.
Madeleine Thien
PositiveThe Asian Review of BooksWell-researched and devastatingly beautiful ... Although the intellectual rigor of the books occasionally gets in the way of Thien’s storytelling, Do Not Say We Have Nothing is written with conviction and honesty.
