Review of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

*On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous* by Ocean Vuong (2019). Published by Penguin Press.

For so many years, I have been such a big Ocean Vuong fan. I’ve published my own poetry in literary magazines and publications since I was sixteen years old, and while I have had some success in that, I always looked up to people like Ocean. They were doing the work I wanted to do, but in my own way.

So when On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous was announced as coming out all of those years ago, I knew I was going to get my hands on the book immediately. Ocean Vuong writing a novel? I was going to be one of the first people to order it for sure.

And so I did. I read this novel for the first time when it came out and my copy was shipped to me, but recently I find myself, years later, thinking about it again. I haven’t touched my copy in a bit, and so I wanted to revisit it and see how it has changed for me now that I’m a little older and wise.

There’s so much joy in revisiting content that you love after the years and comparing your reactions. Sometimes the emotional connection gets so much deeper because you understand certain events more, but other times you find yourself drifting away from something you once loved because you grew.

I’m rambling already, so let’s get into the review!

The story of one Vietnamese American young man as he grapples with diaspora life and his sexuality.

This is a novel told in a nonlinear format, so we’re getting the chunks of the story broken up. I’m going to split it into its distinct narratives for this summary, just for the sake of it being able to be understood easier.

Our main character is known as Little Dog, and he is Vietnamese American. The entire novel is technically a letter to his mother, a woman named Hong, or in English she’s known as Rose.

His mother works at a nail salon shop, and the family was a group of refugees from Vietnam after the war. Together, they live with Rose’s mother, Lan, who forms another crux of the narrative, but none of them are really capable of speaking English when they arrive.

They settle in Hartford, Connecticut, where Rose supports the family as a single mother while working in a nail salon. She’s also kind of abusive to Little Dog, and in some ways he feels a void because of the lack of support emotionally he got from his mother. Hence probably the need to write an entire letter to her where he can be honest about his life.

We also learn about his grandmother, Lan, throughout the narrative. She was supposed to be married off during the war, but then escaped from the situation and was instead forced to become a prostitute. Lan was never able to really get an education because of the war, and she was left with PTSD because of the events happening around them.

Eventually, she does marry a white American soldier, but gives birth to another man’s child. This is Rose, who would also be denied many opportunities in life because of the war. They all ended up in America, but before then, Rose marries a man who is also abusive. She leaves him behind eventually because of this.

Little Dog is having his own coming of age in the United States, as the first in the family to really learn English and become more integreated into American society. He begins realizing that he doesn’t have feelings for girls, and then meets a white boy, who learns more redneck and stereotypical, named Trevor.

They specifically meet at a tobacco farm, and their romance is pretty quick. However, it’s doomed to fail because Trevor will succumb to the effects of drugs, and there will be more tragedy down the road.

The novel, in a nutshell, is about Little Dog coming to terms with all of this through the epistolary form.

Overall Thoughts

Even after all these years, I remember why I love Ocean Vuong’s work. His writing will not be for everyone, as it’s very flowery and poetic, but it works so well in this novel format. I read books like these just for the writing style alone sometimes.

That said, this is a deeply personal book, as a lot of it mirrors what Ocean went through in his own life. I think it’s hard sometimes to do this so well in a novel, but he certainly did it.

I don’t know how his future work is going to hold up at the time of writing this, as some novels and stories will require a tighter form of writing sometimes, but I’m excited to see where he is going with his career as a novelist. I wasn’t a fan of his latest poetry collection, though, if we’re going to be honest.

Go read this if you have not already!

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