On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous: A Novel

This is a beautifully written and haunting meditation on the life on one person. But it's truly about all of life--war, death, survival, hatred, love, luck, cruelty, kindness--and somehow in the midst of all that, wonder. Parts of this book are very disturbing if you are sensitive to animal cruelty. Which I am. But I am not at all sorry I read this novel. And the subject is certainly never glorified or treated lightly. The narrator's observations are at times just piercing and painful. Other times beautiful and full of--well--wonder. It plays with form and drips with love of language. And it's unforgettable.

This was a great and quick read. In total it took me 5 hours to complete this book. This story is a story of an immigrant living and retelling the stories of the immigrants before him such as his mom and grandma. Beautifully written. Loved the portrayal of color. In the beginning of the book, the narrator describes colors to inanimate objects/feelings. As he grows older, other people begin to see him as his own skin color, hence they began to project their understanding of color on to him. Suddenly, color no longer describes an object/feeling but it becomes a weapon that divides people. Color becomes a tool that allows him to be put into a box before ever having the opportunity to give others a chance to know him. Color becomes his identity, as well as the identity of everyone around him. It’s also interesting how trauma affects not only those who lived through traumatic experiences, but also their children who will end up growing up with that trauma. The book has many themes including: • Race • Growing up as an American • Growing up with different cultural identities • Self Identity/Self Discovery • Generational Trauma • Inherited Trauma •Post war affects • Growing up bi racial • Complex parental relationships • Immigrants •Immigrants (due to war) •LGBT Things I disliked: Children having sex: Although the narrator is telling his story, and he is going back in time. I felt highly uncomfortable with the explicit scenes of minors having sex. There was no need to describe certain parts of the body as he did. Simply because of the fact that they were minors when this physical relationship happened. He could have easily mentioned how he felt instead of drawing explicit pictures for his audience. Neutral comment: Parts the story seemed messy, however I personally liked it and I understood it because that’s how my brain works. Making footnotes of footnotes. At the same time, it made sense for the story to be “messy” as he’s writing a letter to his mother. It’s not going to be neat. When you write a letter to your loved ones, many times you’re reminiscing about the old times, and so one memory will turn into another into another into another, and so it gives off the authentic vibes of a letter to someone close to you. You want them to remember the scene that you were at. As many have mentioned, this book isn’t for everyone. Overall, I rate this book 8.0279/10 It’s a great book, easy to read, and it brought me out of my reading hiatus!

Reading the reviews of this book here, I found a fascinating snapshot of who we are: richly feeling and yet constrained, open and still closed in mind and heart, welcoming and resolutely petty, loving but spiteful. The book itself was, for me, incandescent, soaring to great heights, and crushing, dragging me as reader to terrible depths. In the balance, the book is a paean to beauty in all its forms--and beauty takes shapes that pierce the spirit with both pain and joy. Regarding literary sensibility, for me there are strains of Proust in the seemingly involuntary function of memory. Another reviewer related this to Whitman and I can absolutely understand why. The references to Barthes, Duchamp, etcetera are part of my regular lexicon of references (given my own work) so Vuong's literary allusions felt natural to me, though I could imagine others growing discontent with the exposure to the unfamiliar--when they don't wish to be sidetracked by new ideas. For me that was always a joy in reading a well-read writer (e.g., Eco or Borges). Vuong loves language with a passion; that is obvious. His ardor sings. The tune is a sometimes a dithyramb, often an elegy, occasionally a hymn, and at times a heartbreaking lament. If I were to offer a criticism of faults, there were a few moments of uneveness of quality in parts II and III. But these seemed exceedingly minor to me in the context of the total work. The book is not for everyone. I write that in manner similar to saying that Joyce isn't for everyone. Readers who claim the book is bad because they couldn't understand it, because Vuong doesn't follow a straight line or leave a clear thread in the labyrinth for them to follow are claiming a rather pedestrian criterion for a universal judgment. By that measure, "Finnegans Wake" is a crime against humanity! Here's a thought: "I don't like this sort of writing" is a very different statement from "this is bad writing." The former is wholly understandable and might just be a matter of individual taste. The latter is a declaration of critical finality, the rightful domain of consensus and posterity. And to those who recoiled in homophobic disgust, I beg you to try opening yourself up to the world as others live it. I'm a straight white male, so I share neither the same sexual desires nor experiences of America (or world) as the author, but allowing myself to empathize with the characters Vuong writes only makes the scope of human understanding that much broader for me. To feel like some agenda is being pushed upon one here is less a reflection on author, publisher, or reviewers than upon one's own defense mechanisms and inability to momentarily leave a world that only affirms only a dominant narrative that reflects one's own experiences. The abuse of the narrator and other figures, the violence against animals: these things are horrific and abject, yes. But they are also a part of life. As part of life they are subjects of poetic reflection; life is not all happy songs and roses, why should art be? I remember someone complaining that Goya's "Disasters" were so horrific as to render his art bad, or not art at all. Most of us would find that idea risible, but I see the sentiment repeated here. Turning our backs on brutality is to give it access to us unchecked and unexamined. The violence in "On Earth," never felt gratuitous to me nor aestheticized for the sake of glorifying violence or excusing it. Rather, it seemed to me that Vuong explored the ambivalences of our brutality, our ability to be loving, caring monsters, beautiful and horribly flawed. Anyhow, I loved the book and recommend it if you are looking for a read that with at once enthrall and challenge you. I read it in one sitting, so I can say that Vuong captured something profound and compelling for me, personally. I honestly find it hard to believe how young he is; there is a wealth of experience and reflection here that is seemingly beyond his years. I look forward to his future endeavors.

The author’s free form memories of his childhood in Hartford, CT written to express the emotional trauma are not presented in chronological order. As his ma (Rose) and Grandma Lan were Vietnamese refugees with their own trauma of war, all are trying to fit into American life. Ocean has to navigate American society for his ma who cannot read English and whose only job opportunities are at clock factory and then in the nail salon. Some role reversal here and the ma’s fatigue and PTSD affect her relationship with her son so he doesn’t get the unconditional love he needs and sometimes endures abuse. Eventually he finds one teen who sees him and accepts him for who he is. Through this friendship with Trevor, also a child of an American vet damaged by his experiences in the war, he explores his own masculinity impacted by no father figure in his life other than an abusive father who was sent to jail. What pulls the reader into this memoir is the beautiful poetic writing and metaphors. Seeing how children born of parents who only knew war in their youth are impacted is eye opening. Interesting cultural references on dealing with death. Being gay is dealt with from the perspective of someone who slowly becomes his true self and the vulnerability is beautifully captured in these words, “To be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted.”

So much like poetry and also an amazing story of love and survival. Allowed me all sorts of reflection on the complexities of humans. Just a totally amazing book.

This novel moved me. it made me cry and laugh out loud. The author put the storey and life, in general into a beautiful storey, that makes you think of times in your own life when you could relate. Like I said it moved me to tears many times. Very poetically written, beautifully.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is letter from a son to a mother. Our main character, Little dog, writes a letter to his illiterate mother who immigrated to from Vietnam. Little dog explores many themes exploration in this letter such as love, identity, trauma, war, and masculinity. The exploration of these themes shown in the letter make up the person little dog is today. I liked the novel a lot because it was very realistic and resonated with me personally. I like the approach on structure Little dog took when writing this letter to his mother. Sometimes it starts off with “Dear Ma,” other times it starts with a memory, or it would just be poetry. The inclusion of these different writing structures added another layer to the experience of reading this novel. I also like all the metaphors the speaker used to describe the complexities of his relationships with other people. I think the speaker does a neat job of using the combination of language and structure to convey his message. However, I do feel at times it does feel disconnected. Sometimes the speaker’s memories don’t correspond to the earlier or the later memory, so they get lost in translation. But when the memories do correspond to one another using the intended language the speaker uses really shine. Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone who regularly reads since it would be a hard book to digest if you aren’t an avid reader.

In April 2022, the book discussion group at the LGBT Center in NYC was in almost universal agreement about this poetic memoir-novel, with only some minor disagreement about whether this is a four-and-a-half-star or full-five-star work. Everyone was wild about the brilliant and colorfully impressionistic writing - completely over the top. Bob compared the writing to the complexity of a millefleur paperweight. While I'm a sucker for this sort of literary folderol, a few of us thought that it might be too poetic at times, and that a bit ugly language might be better to describe the Vietnamese war or some of Little Dog's abuse. We talked about the animal metaphors: the taxidermied deer in the rest area, the trapped monkey, the caged veal calves, the Monarch butterflies that fly in one direction (only the children return), the buffalo who fall off the cliff (search for David Wojanrowicz's buffalo image) and, of course, Little Dog, himself. "On Earth..." presents the truly poor, the working impoverished. It also shows Vietnam and the war from the point of the invaded Vietnamese, and shows Little Dog as a true outsider: "Keep your head down. Stay invisible. You're already Vietnamese." Racism is common. Little Dog's boyfriend Trevor is also from an impoverished and alcohol-addled broken home (literally, a falling apart trailer). The intergenerational trauma extends across all the families in the novel. Heterosexuality gets a bad rap, too; there are no intact straight families to be found. This is not a coming out story. Little Dog and Trevor find each other and explore their sexuality. When Little Dog tells his mother that he's gay, she accepts it as she accepts so many other things she doesn't understand. All the humor is midnight dark: the women at the nail salon, one with the dead horse and the other with one leg; the taxidermied deer in the rest area; and Lan's dentures after she dies. Facts are dropped into the novel, both about the Oxy epidemic of overdoses and the multi-racial outsider hero Tiger Woods. It reminds us that these stories are real. The novel is built on the themes of escape, memory, and language. It is full of floating fragments, perhaps too many fragments at times, too jumpy, too overlapping and spiral without enough story, and overly metaphoric at times, but beautiful and authentic, all at the same time.

Quality of the book looks perfect

Beautiful. I enjoyed how artfully and thoughtfully each sentence in this book was put together. It engages all the senses and inspires all kinds of emotions.

An extremely powerful narrative of a Vietnamese boy and his relationship with his mother and grandmother living as expatriates in the USA. Also it portrays a coming of age story set in a rural part of America seen with different lenses and the discovery for his first love for a bitterly sad teenage boy. Writing a letter to his illiterate mother, the narrator reveals all the suffering and complexities that their lives carried away and their struggle for mutual understanding living in a new country. This a debut autobiographical novel by the highly-awarded poet Ocean Vuong who gives us a heartbreaking punch of his experience for being a foreigner in America. The narrative is full of poetry in its poignant fabric of his personal life and reminded me of a great Portuguese writer as well: Valter Hugo Mãe. It was a great pleasure to read such a captivating and intense novel.

Style does not sit with me, but then again I am not a native english speaker.

Such a moving book. Could not put it down.