On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Blurb (on back of book):
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.
With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.
MY OPINION: *****
I don't even know how to begin writing this review. I received this book as a birthday present back in February but I've been putting off reading it because I've heard it's a lot. And that's exactly what it was. I don't know how to explain it in words but this book tore me apart and put me back together again. I don't know what I was expecting but it certainly wasn't this.
I don't annotate books and I don't support the annotation of books personally but I wanted to save a lot of the quotes in this book simply because of how beautiful they were. I was in awe that someone could firstly think up the many parts of this book and then put it into words as perfectly as they were in this book. Ocean Vuong is an acclaimed poet and I can see why. Will I ever read his poetry? Probably not (I am not a poetry person). However, I greatly enjoyed reading this book and found each line perfectly worded.
The book is told in a series of vignettes mostly as Little Dog writes a letter to his illiterate mother about his life. I honestly thought this book was autobiographical because it all felt so real and so randomly obscure that I can't imagine someone just thinking that up out of their minds. However, I was shocked when I found out this book is purely fiction and I am convinced Vuong must have drawn at least some of the parts from his personal life because of how detailed and pinpointed each scene was.
There were a lot of "random" segments told in one-liner stanzas that I found a little confusing. I think if I were more familiar with Vuong's poetry it would make more sense but I personally was lost reading those sections. I don't really understand the meaning of the scenes and would have loved to have seen the book written in the same general prose format.
The only issue I had with this book was the pacing. I found it very confusing and disorienting to go back and forth between so many different scenes. Some pages with particularly long blocks of text felt a little tiring to keep reading and I had to take several breaks before going back to it. However, as a whole, despite the shorter length of this book, I considered it a full masterpiece by the end similar to other books that are much longer and denser.
The book explores a lot of different important themes of identity. Little Dog spins a narrative after the Vietnam War and the American-Vietnamese life, with intergenerational trauma, racial conflicts, homophobia, and immigrant identities. I think each theme was interwoven throughout the book subtle and beautifully without making it seem trope-y or tacky. He touches upon issues surrounding these topics that most people wouldn't even think of if they haven't personally lived that life for themselves, and I appreciated his delicacy and emotional ways of telling each story so tacitly and perfectly. I loved reading about the different relationships between Lan, the grandmother, Rose, the mother, and Little Dog and seeing how each familial bond is portrayed in all its lights, both positive and negative.
Trevor and Little Dog's relationship was very interesting to me. We see an insightful exploration of a first-romance and homosexuality and young love. However, there were a couple of scenes where I was like, okay wait, what the hell am I reading? I was a little surprised by some of the scenes between the boys and honestly, not everything felt the most safe and consensual to me, which made me feel a little uneasy. However, I think their relationship felt very raw and real in a way that other fictional relationships tend to soften. I found it a little strange that we got so much detail about their intimate lives considering this was supposed to be a letter to Little Dog's mother, but it felt very true. I found it interesting to see how his mother reacted to Little Dog's coming out, especially since she didn't seem to fully understand or grasp the concept of being "gay."
The book covers so many different topics, from Tiger Woods to 50 Cent to a mixed-race relationship, in a very small amount of pages. I found it incredibly insightful, interesting, heartbreaking, and tragic and loved every bit of it. I don't see myself reading it again for a while but it really struck me in a way I wasn't expecting it to. I feel bad because I recommended it to a teacher of mine before actually having finished it, and now looking back on that, I feel like perhaps this wasn't the best book to recommend to a higher-up...
I would recommend this book to readers looking for an achingly raw, beautifully-written, stunning bildungsroman (a new word I just learned!).
Main Character: Little Dog
Sidekick(s): Trevor, family, etc
Villain(s): Racism, homophobia, discrimination, etc
Realistic Fiction Elements: This book was all very real to life.
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