Leftover liquids and the moisture of mourning: the oozes of Ocean Vuong’s oeuvre

Abstract

This article tracks the moisture that spills across Ocean Vuong’s poetry and prose. Whereas the oceanic serves as the spectacular site across which Vietnamese refugees are rescued and rehabilitated through the scripts of US humanitarianism, moisture – as an ambient material and process – coagulates a queer, minor mode of refugee mourning and melancholia in the ongoing aftermath of the War in Vietnam. Pooling together these leftover liquids – sweat, mud, blood, amniotic fluid, semen, and urine – this study considers how the literary and chemical properties of humidity can alter extant epistemic configurations of war: not as an exceptional event, but instead as an everyday surround that continues to be weathered.