The Beauty of “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”
**CW: Substance Abuse, Abuse, War, Trauma, and Mental Illness
Graphic by Mairany Garcia
There are books that from the moment they touch your fingertips, up until the last word you read, leave you altered. To me, that book was “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” by Ocean Vuong.
I read the book back in 2019 and before that, I had anxiously been waiting to grab it. I usually only stick to science-fiction, romance, and poetry, so when I heard that poet Ocean Vuong was releasing his debut novel titled after his acclaimed poem, “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous,” I knew I had to get it.
I started the book in the summer of 2019, a couple of weeks after Vuong released it. However, it wasn’t until the summer of 2020 until I actually finished it. And it isn’t until the recent announcement that it was being adapted into a movie by A24, that I reread it again.
Why? Because the perspective Vuong creates through his book is both impactful yet agonizing to read. There were parts in the book that I felt too familiar with as a child of immigrants and some moments that led me to a deeper understanding of Vuong’s own experiences too. Yet, however it made me feel, it made me a believer in the idea that hurt and beauty can coexist while still remaining indifferent to one another. Vuong’s writing is so powerful, and I cannot truly capture it, but here goes.
“On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” is written as a letter from a boy named Little Dog to his illiterate mother knowing she will never be able to read it.
The question guiding the book, Vuong says, is this: “What happens when we want to say the thing we need to say to those we love most and we can’t do it?”
Photo by Tom Hines
Vuong touches on topics surrounding family, addiction, trauma, mental illness, war, and his experience being a gay Vietnamese American in Hartford, Connecticut. The book, while being novel, is also autobiographical to Vuong’s life written in a vignette. This is to say it is intended to focus on moments in Little Dog’s life and his relationships instead of a larger plot or narrative. They are intended to leave an impression on the reader’s mind.
Vuong’s family fled Vietnam as refugees in 1990 when he was two and resettled in Hartford. This theme of war is prominent in the book and while I’m a stranger to the effects war has, Vuong encompasses the impact trauma has on generations. The greatest example of this is when Rose, his mother, tries on a dress at Goodwill and asks if it’s fireproof, not yet able to read, Little Dog searches the tags and says “yeah.” Rose, who had been born amid war, who once saw a schoolhouse collapse during a napalm raid at five, asks a simple question and Little Dog looks at her eyes “glazed and wide” and sees glimpses of the war still in her. And, this is why the book is so powerful. Vuong doesn’t need to tell you his Ma is still haunted by the war, he shows you.
In an interview with Vice, Vuong says he does this intentionally.
“Language is real. The power of it is that it gets deeper than any human touch. If I were to touch you right now, I would only get to your skin. But when I speak to you, I’m all the way through.”
Vuong’s Commentary About the Book
There is a moment in the book where Rose goes to a supermarket with Little Dog and his grandmother near closing in search of oxtail to make bún bò huế, a Vietnamese soup. Unable to find it, the man behind the counter asks Rose if he could help. She begins to speak to him in Vietnamese, unfortunately, he doesn’t understand. Shouting, she tries French because she still recalls some from when she was younger. When she still can’t communicate with them, crying, she asks Little Dog to translate for her as her mom and the men behind the counter laugh. Because Little Dog didn’t know how to translate oxtail, he simply shakes his head in shame. They leave and Little Dog promises himself he’d never be wordless when his mother needed him to speak for her.
“So began my career as our family’s official interpreter. From then on, I would fill in our blanks, our silences, stutters, whenever I could. I code switched. I took off our language and wore my English, like a mask, so that others would see my face and therefore yours.”
Little Dog details the experience of being a child of a Vietnamese immigrant in the U.S. in a way that feels universal. As a child of Mexican Indigenous immigrants, I pictured myself in this way too easily.
And, I could go on about Little Dog’s experiences and how beautiful each page in this book is. About how in every page, there seems to be a quote about grief, identity, and the battle of seeing yourself. How there are reoccurring metaphors about monarch butterflies. How there is a rawness about addiction and queerness later on Little Dog’s life. How, although I’m not Little Dog, I can picture him so clearly talking to his mother in a Dunkin Donuts and coming out to her.
The beauty of “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous,” is the exact reason why I couldn’t bear reading it at times and even after I finished it, never again — Little Dog’s internal conflicts and experiences are so raw and he captures the voices of those he felt compelled to write about so powerfully.
In the end, Vuong said it best when he asked, “Is that what art is? To be touched thinking what we feel is ours when, in the end, it was someone else, in longing, who finds us?”
A sample of “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” narrated by Ocean Vuong
✧ Buy the book here! ✧