Ocean Vuong, Ocean Vuong: On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019, Diversified Publishing)
368 pages
English language
Published Oct. 29, 2019 by Diversified Publishing.
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 …
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.
I really wanted to like this book, it is just not my cup of tea. However, I switched to the audio book version in the middle which helped me sticking to it.
This novel by Ocean Vuong is told from a first-person narrative as an autobiographical story written to the protagonist's mother. But using this as a device, it tells multiple stories simultaneously. Each is almost a parable, and none is independent of another. It takes place in the USA primarily.
The protagonist relates his coming into the world, his childhood, his first love, his violent youth, his grandmother's love for him (and her past life in Vietnam), and his experiences of grief. Entangled are the acts of violence of the Vietnam War, the estrangement of the protagonist from his two nations, drug addiction and abuse, philosophy and thoughts on how words find meaning. The story alone is uncomplicated, and ticks along at a pleasant pace, but the poetic undertones and masterful weaving of story with concept make it a wonderful experience. To paraphrase Vuong's words: This book is not created from …
This novel by Ocean Vuong is told from a first-person narrative as an autobiographical story written to the protagonist's mother. But using this as a device, it tells multiple stories simultaneously. Each is almost a parable, and none is independent of another. It takes place in the USA primarily.
The protagonist relates his coming into the world, his childhood, his first love, his violent youth, his grandmother's love for him (and her past life in Vietnam), and his experiences of grief. Entangled are the acts of violence of the Vietnam War, the estrangement of the protagonist from his two nations, drug addiction and abuse, philosophy and thoughts on how words find meaning. The story alone is uncomplicated, and ticks along at a pleasant pace, but the poetic undertones and masterful weaving of story with concept make it a wonderful experience. To paraphrase Vuong's words: This book is not created from the violence of the past, but in spite of it. It is created from beauty, and it is beautiful.
An astonishing beautiful novel written by a poet, which takes the form of a fictional memoir, covering the main character’s gay coming-of-age story braided in with his mother’s and grandmother’s lives in Vietnam before and during the war, which is ultimately about what it means to be alive. It won’t be for everyone, but I loved it. One of the best books I’ve read in the past 5 years.
For a book that is so intimate in detail it felt very superficial to me. I never connected with the characters or their pain. They just did not feel real to me. I could not relate.
It was okay. It was mostly a miss for me. Some people might be able to enjoy and appreciate this type of writing. Me, not so much.
This was a stunningly beautiful book. There are many themes in this book that I found captivating, but I’ll just mention a couple that resonated with me. First, Vuong does a splendid job here showing how the wars in Vietnam that finally ended with unification in the 1970s left a multi-generational influence on Vietnamese families, especially refugees who sought asylum in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s. The protagonist in this story, “Little Dog,” writes a letter to his illiterate mother whose spoken Vietnamese was stunted at an elementary school level due to the war and who never had the opportunity to learn how to read or write. The mother, and to some extent his grandmother, suffer from an incredible host of psychological and physiological problems associated with trauma suffered during the war years in Vietnam. “Little Dog’s” mother is also the offspring of coupling between an American …
This was a stunningly beautiful book. There are many themes in this book that I found captivating, but I’ll just mention a couple that resonated with me. First, Vuong does a splendid job here showing how the wars in Vietnam that finally ended with unification in the 1970s left a multi-generational influence on Vietnamese families, especially refugees who sought asylum in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s. The protagonist in this story, “Little Dog,” writes a letter to his illiterate mother whose spoken Vietnamese was stunted at an elementary school level due to the war and who never had the opportunity to learn how to read or write. The mother, and to some extent his grandmother, suffer from an incredible host of psychological and physiological problems associated with trauma suffered during the war years in Vietnam. “Little Dog’s” mother is also the offspring of coupling between an American soldier and a Vietnamese woman (Lan). Vuong here illustrates nicely how the legacies of the Vietnam War continue inflicting American culture and society in many unseen ways.
Second, Vuong possesses incredible insight into the lived experience of poverty in the United States. He paints this portrait of poverty through the lens of childhood and adolescence. For example, he illustrates how children are immune (temporarily) to some of the most heartrending realities of living in an impoverished community or being the offspring of impoverished parents. He depicts children screaming and yelling as they run around the back of a run-down tenement building, with the protagonist waxing poetic about how children can find joy in the meanest of circumstance. His depiction of poverty is primarily in Hartford, Connecticut but with a substantial blend of the rural experience as well. He moves seamlessly between describing the harsh realities of urban squalor and the isolated, dark confines of drug infested trailer parks in the countryside. I think that in an American culture that has become increasingly divided, Vuong excels at showing how some experiences, such as poverty, drug addiction, and its associated lexicon, can transcend the normal barriers of race, gender, and ethnicity.
Suffice it to say I found this a very illuminating work.
3.5 stars. If I didn’t already know this author was also a poet, it’d be very clear from the writing. Very thoughtful, intentional work with words here. Unfortunately, I’m someone who struggles to understand and appreciate poetry (though I am trying), so I’m not the best audience for this book. I think my favorite line is:
“All this time I told myself we were born from war—but I was wrong, Ma. We were born from beauty.
Let no one mistake us for the fruit of violence—but that violence, having passed through the fruit, failed to spoil it.”
Hard to follow and I found the imagery a mess. I kept waiting for the next chapter to tie it all together but for me it never seemed to. Every second it third paragraph was compelling enough for me to keep reading but I have no desire to continue.
Rating it 3/5 for the couple of laughs and tearful moments I felt actually hit and the point of view of a PoC that I haven't experienced.
2.5 Stars.
The writing is beautiful – you can tell that Ocean Vuong is a poet in how he crafts his sentences. And the story is layered with a lot of important themes: the Vietnam War, immigration, the opioid crisis, drug addition, homosexuality... it's a LOT. And apparently the novel is (not so?) loosely based on Ocean's life story.
So why then, if there's so much substance and beauty, am I only giving it two stars? Because it was hard to follow. It bounced around and retold the same story in different ways, and at times I found myself confused about who he was talking to or writing about. This strikes me as the type of novel people claim to love because they are either a) poets or MFA holders who have a really deep appreciation for language and writing, or b) pretentious and want to seem smart.
Don't know if this book is poetry or philosophy or autobiography or maybe just an argument for why we shouldn't have such walled off genres. More than briefly gorgeous and something I'll keep thinking about.
This was a quick read, but incredibly insightful and thought provoking. I was expecting a heartfelt recollection of memories of the author's mother, but there was so much more. I was surprised at the thick, almost tangible nostalgia the author conveyed through their descriptions of their adolescence in Hartford. But I found the story shined brightest during the parts about the author's complex relationship with his family.
With that being said, there were moments where the narrative felt weak and fractured. I found myself skimming through the parts that were more monologuing than insightful. Overall, a good read that I would recommend.
A friend of mine reviewed this recently and explained it far better than I could: Book Review: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. I added a comment there:
I felt very much the same for quite a lot of the parts I have so far read. Bits of it I really liked, because they spoke to me specifically — Little Dog’s first queer experiences, for example — but a lot of it felt really uncomfortably misery-porn without me feeling I was learning a huge amount from it (except a bit more context of wartime Vietnam, maybe). And it was also pretty strange reading something that felt like it was autobiographical but also a roman à clef, y’know?
Interesting and bits of it are great — and [a:Ocean Vuong|4456871|Ocean Vuong|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1561472666p2/4456871.jpg] is clearly an exceptional writer — but I DNF’d about halfway through.
A friend of mine reviewed this recently and explained it far better than I could: Book Review: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. I added a comment there:
I felt very much the same for quite a lot of the parts I have so far read. Bits of it I really liked, because they spoke to me specifically — Little Dog’s first queer experiences, for example — but a lot of it felt really uncomfortably misery-porn without me feeling I was learning a huge amount from it (except a bit more context of wartime Vietnam, maybe). And it was also pretty strange reading something that felt like it was autobiographical but also a roman à clef, y’know?
Interesting and bits of it are great — and [a:Ocean Vuong|4456871|Ocean Vuong|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1561472666p2/4456871.jpg] is clearly an exceptional writer — but I DNF’d about halfway through.
Ik heb dit boek niet kunnen uitlezen. De poëtische schrijfstijl is gewoon echt mijn ding niet. De pagina’s vol beeldspraak en weinig verhaal... Jammer, maar helaas.
a lot of frosting and not much cake. good if you like that kind of thing I'm sure
ohh boy
I was totally captivated by the language in this book. It's beautiful, lyrical and powerful. It's a language of destruction and possession. At the same time, it becomes an attempt to break free, a lighthouse searching for a way forward. Linguistically the book is absolutely phenomenal.
