Episode · How I Write · 2026-03-25
Books mentioned on Ocean Vuong: NYU Professor Teaches the Art of Writing | How I Write
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Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Red Cavalry
Red Cavalry by Isaac Babel is a classic collection of short stories depicting the brutal, chaotic, and kaleidoscopic experiences of the Soviet-Polish War through the eyes of a Jewish intellectual serving in a Cossack cavalry unit.
Discussed“So, let's take a line from Isaac Babel, one of my favorite short story writers. Babel writing in the early 1920s, um during the Soviet-Polish War in Red Cavalry.”
Where to get it
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The Method of Hope
Discussed“It is in a book called The Method of Hope. And he says, "Well, I don't go into the rainforest looking for what looks like medicine."”
Where to get it
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Crush
Discussed“And you don't need to know that this is in the book Crush, which is about queer loss and and desire in the '90s in the wake of the AIDS epidemic.”
Where to get it
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Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe is an influential anti-slavery novel published in 1852 that profoundly shaped public attitudes toward slavery in the United States prior to the Civil War.
Discussed“You know, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin created the Civil War according to Lincoln. Which freed millions of people. So it happens but I don't wake up um counting on that because there are examples on both sides historically.”
Where to get it
