Author: Ocean Vuong
Genre: Fiction
Blurb: On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.
Me: I've heard Ocean Vuong's name again and again now for a couple of years. I'm so glad I finally got to sit down and read one of his works- especially a book as beautiful and heartbreaking as this one.
The Ups: I know Ocean Vuong established his career first as a poet, and I feel like this book is just proof of the amazing stuff that happens when writers work across genres. I was struck from the first page by the language. It's so lyrical and descriptive, with the most delicate images. Each idea/paragraph/story is short, not really falling within the confines of a "chapter." It's more just like a collection of moments and descriptions, and I thought it was absolutely amazing. Because the beautiful descriptions didn't continue for pages on pages of narrative, it made it so easy to read.
I also loved how along with that, there wasn't really a constant plot/thread and yet I learned more and more as a reader about Vuong's life. In the beginning, it seemed like the book was jumping around from scene to scene, just showing the relationship of Vuong and his mom. But as it went on, there were more constant plot points and other figures that came in, and the book jumped across years of time as well. I think what allowed it to be a coherent work was how Vuong didn't try to force any sort of story; instead, his story was revealed through a bunch of different avenues.
The book deals with a lot of pain. It brings in generational trauma, abuse, racism, and drug usage. At times, the amount of sadness that it discusses could have felt overwhelming. But Vuong always kept the story grounded in specific people and places. It was his mother, or Trevor, or someone we got to know that would be affected by these things. The people were more than their pain and that's what made it bearable for Vuong and for the reader. He expressed that so well.
The Downs: I think partially because the story revolved more around these flashes of images and relationships, the ending didn't impact me as much. It was really gorgeous but I think there was still a distance (probably intended!) from the characters like Vuong's mom and Trevor that made the ending a little less personal. At the end, the general feeling was more that I had loved the experience of reading and interacting with such beautiful language and story but less that I had really connected with Vuong's world.
Rating: 4 kisses!
What is a country but a borderless sentence, a life?
To love something, then, is to name it after something so worthless it might be left untouched- and alive.
It has started to rain; the dirt around the woman's bare feet is flecked with red-brown quotation marks- her body a thing spoken with.
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