[Please scroll down for 2nd Review]
Penguin Press. 2019. 242 pages.
ISBN 978-0-525-56202-3
Wounded Love: A Review of On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous
by Anita van de Ven
Vuong’s debut novel is the kind of book that, as a writer, makes you want to throw in the towel. Immediately. At least it did for me. Clearly a poet first and foremost, Vuong’s language is painfully beautiful. As the title suggests, it is gorgeous.
In Gorgeous we get to witness Little Dog, a Vietnamese boy coming of age in poverty stricken New England. He shares a cramped apartment with his mother, aunt and grandmother, each of them struggling to make ends meet in the face of deep emotional scars left behind by the Vietnam war. The book is written as a letter to Little Dog’s illiterate mother; an enticing and ambiguous factor, as Vuong leaves us wondering whether the story ever was made known to the mother. Did Little Dog decide to read his story to her in the end? Why is his name Little Dog anyway? Does the fact that his mother is unable to read change the way Little Dog writes to her, more honestly perhaps, without fear of judgment? And then there is the language factor, the fact that the letter is written in English, not Vietnamese, which is Little Dog’s mother tongue, further removing her from knowing his true story.
Humbled and grateful to be let in, I was in absolute awe of Vuong’s capacity for vulnerability.
I certainly got this sense of confessional freedom as the reader—the language is raw and honest leaving nothing to the imagination. The description of Little Dog’s childhood, although riddled with poverty and abuse, also describes beautifully intimate moments, the entire family sharing a bed, the boy pulling his grandmother’s white hairs out of her scalp to make her feel young. The bond with his mother are twofold - intimate, filled with love, devotion and admiration for her strength; and heart wrenching, as we see descriptions of her abusive behavior. Vuong provides clarity as he describes the mother’s symptoms of PTSD from the Vietnam war, a deep-rooted fear that never left her, regularly causing the family to cower in the corner of their apartment for fear of bombing. The trauma has lodged itself deeply into the bones of this family.
There are times, late at night, when your son would wake believing a bullet is lodged inside him. He’d feel it floating on the right side of his chest, just between the ribs. The bullet was always here, the boy thinks, older even than himself—and his bones, tendons, and veins had merely wrapped around the metal shard, sealing it inside him. It wasn’t me, the boy thinks, who was inside my mother’s womb, but this bullet, this seed I bloomed around. Even now, as the cold creeps in around him, he feels it poking out from his chest, slighting tenting his sweater. He feels for the protrusion but, as usual, finds nothing. It’s receded, he thinks. It wants to stay inside me. It is nothing without me. Because a bullet without a body is a song without ears.
Little Dog describes his mother’s exhaustion, falling asleep on the sofa within minutes after impossibly long hours working at the nail salon. Scenes of the salon employee’s children being raised in that work environment, give the reader a rare insight into this world, a place and population most of us tend to give very little thought to – we are introduced to these commonalities. The children do their homework inhaling toxic fumes, while their mothers cook meals in woks crouched on the salon’s linoleum floor.
And this is only Part One of the book—I haven’t even mentioned the love story. After establishing the family’s war-torn dynamic, the traumatized mother, the aunt with the unfortunate attraction to violent men, a strong grandmother and guilt-ridden white grandfather, Vuong moves the story to Little Dog’s teen years working at a tobacco farm, where he falls in love with a boy named Trevor.
His upbringing, as well as his country had failed him, this is powerful and heart-breaking. The book had me in tears.
The scenes of these beautiful troubled boys are rich in texture, with dialogue immediately placing the reader right there beside them in that barn. Little Dog and Trevor spend their time pondering life, smoking cigarettes and drinking cheap beers, the drying tobacco leaves dripping down from the rafters.
“This crop ain’t even legit,” he said. His voice echoed up the rafters. I peered over my shoulder, catching him. “Wormholes all over ‘em. We got two good years, maybe three, and then—” He ran his hand, like a blade, over his Adam’s apple. “It’s a wrap.”
Intertwined with these scenes, the reader is taken back to Little Dog’s life with his mother at a young age, as well as Trevor growing up with his drunk (and also abusive) father. Having experienced the challenges of racism as an Asian boy growing up in a predominantly white environment, Little Dog is initially surprised that a white boy could possibly have any hardship in his life. Quietly and subtly it becomes clear to him as well as to the reader that they have much in common, as the boys bond over their individual violent childhoods. These scenes of teenage love have such an authentic-feeling, with just the right amount of tension and innocence.
The relatively innocent initial scenes of the boys make way for more hardcore ones describing the two of them experimenting with hard drugs and having their first sexual experiences, and the rawness of Vuong’s writing starts to come to the foreground. At times cringe-worthy, the work is brave and important and directly from the heart. There seemed to be a level of shame that these boys had to cope with, on top of simply being young and inexperienced. There seemed to be a deep fear of judgment—both societal and judgment of self, no doubt related—particularly on the part of Trevor, that cis-gendered people don’t have to contend with. I realized I had been allowed into another world, one I haven’t had access to before. Humbled and grateful to be let in, I was in absolute awe of Vuong’s capacity for vulnerability.
Hemingway once said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Vuong took the blood and spun it into poetic gold.
At the end of part two, there is a moment where Vuong let his poetic skills really shine. These pages are filled with beautiful imagery in the hybrid style describing Trevor’s kind-hearted nature despite his rough outer shell. It was the perfect way to transition into part three of the novel—where we learn of Trevor’s death.
Trevor rusted pickup and no license.
Trevor sixteen; blue jeans streaked with deer blood.
Trevor too fast and not enough.
Trevor waving his John Deere cap from the driveway as you ride by on your squeaky Schwinn.
Trevor who fingered a freshman girl then tossed her underwear in the lake for fun.
For summer. For your hands were wet and Trevor’s name like an engine starting up in the night. Who snuck out to meet a boy like you. Yellow and barely there. Trevor going fifty through his daddy’s wheat field. Who jams his fries into a Whopper and chews with both feet on the gas. Your eyes closed, riding shotgun, the wheat a yellow confetti.
When he learns of the news, Little Dog is on a train to New York, where he has been living for some time. It has been several years since he last saw Trevor. We learn of Trevor’s addiction to OxyContin and how Little Dog narrowly escaped this very life, saving himself from the same fate. His feelings of guilt and regret at leaving his friend behind are palpable, as well as his bitterness and rage over the injustice of the world of pharmaceuticals in this country. Suddenly, for the reader, the opioid epidemic has a face. In contrast to a news clip of some poor people in a town far away, this particular casualty seizes to be an anonymous person. It is Trevor. The boy whom our hero loved, whom we loved, who had a good heart but none of the support he needed to grow into a self-sufficient human being able to thrive. His upbringing, as well as his country had failed him, this is powerful and heart-breaking. The book had me in tears.
As Vuong himself admitted, Gorgeous is an autobiographical work thinly veiled as fiction, and as a memoirist, I chose to read it as such. The letter form was so effective in its intimacy, the person to whom the letter was directed being unable to read, deeply poetic. The book was also a refreshing change of pace to the more “traditional” memoir form. It certainly made me consider trying the structure on for size for my own memoir.
Not that I was compelled to go near my own work for several days or even weeks upon finishing the last page. I absolutely devoured the book, nearly going straight back to the first page to begin again, yet the overwhelming feeling I was left with upon finishing Gorgeous, was “Why do I even bother? Why even try putting any more literature out into the world when my talent will never even come close to this?” This level of talent and skill is truly unfair.
Like a little dog, a few days later, I unfurled my tail from between my legs and sat back down into my chair and resumed my humble work. In the words of another very talented author: Onward!
The Fragility and Beauty That Makes Us Human: A Review of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
by Christopher Goritski
Author, Ocean Vuong
Authors have been using the epistolary form as a literary convention for a long time. This voyeuristic element draws us in. The reader glances over the character’s shoulder as they write. We cannot help ourselves glancing at this intimate communication. Notable examples of this form can be seen in Louise Erdrich’s House of the Living God, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet.
In poet Ocean Vuong’s debut novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, the reader looks over the shoulder of a young man as he writes a letter to his mother. The letter encompasses the entirety of the novel. Vuong has said that the inspiration for On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous came from an essay he had written which was a letter to his mother. That essay helped form the first chapter of his book. Previously, Vuong had published an award-winning poetry collection entitled Night Sky with Exit Wounds.
The narrator in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is Little Dog, a twenty-eight-year-old Vietnamese-American man. His efforts in writing this letter may be futile, however, and more of an exercise; the narrator knows his mother will never be able to read the letter. She does not speak nor read English, but still, he perseveres. It is a necessity that Little Dog writes his story. It is a necessity that he is heard. We witness it all, looking over his shoulder as he unpacks his life and his relationships with his family.
We are a witness to Little Dog’s process of individuation as he integrates experiences from his childhood. Initially, he attempts to make sense of the intense bond he has with his mother, “I am writing you from inside a body that used to be yours. Which is to say, I’m writing as a son.” Little Dog declares a separate and distinct space between him and his mother. This theme between individuals is carried throughout the novel.
Readers get to view intimately the challenges Little Dog's family encounters as a family of immigrants living in Hartford, Connecticut. From an early age, Little Dog acts as the conduit to American life for his mother and grandmother. As the only English-speaking member of his family, he carries a burden to communicate his mother’s needs to the world. Within the letter we get a sense of this responsibility:
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 tells us of having to call in orders from the Victoria’s Secrets catalog for his mother’s undergarments and contacting her boss to request a change in hours, assuming this parentified role.
This letter he is writing is a testament to the man he has become and his resiliency. He exposes his wounds without self-pity or apology.
Vuong provides a clear depiction of transgenerational trauma and the impact that war can have on generations. Little Dog attempts to place the erratic and abusive behavior of both his mother and grandmother into some sort of context. Little Dog asks his mother in the letter, “When does the war end? When can I say your name and have it mean only your name and not what you left behind?” Vuong depicts how Little Dog has to negotiate his mother's erratic moods, how he needs to care for his mother and his grandmother when they have flashbacks, how he survives his mother’s rage, “Perhaps to lay hands on your child is to prepare him for war.” Through his reflection, Little Dog discovers that the abuse he faced during his childhood came not from a lack of love, but the trauma of war.
Little Dog continues to reflect on his life beyond his childhood through adolescence and into adulthood. He shares with his mother what it was like to tell her he liked boys while sitting with her in a Dunkin’ Donuts, “We were exchanging truths, I realized, which is to say, we were cutting one another.” He shares in his letter what it was like to love another boy, to share their bodies with each other, and the inevitable loss. He shares his experiences with drugs and the eventual devastation drug use had amongst his friends.
This letter he is writing is a testament to the man he has become and his resiliency. He exposes his wounds without self-pity or apology. Vuong accomplishes this with the absence saccharine sentimentality, “Sometimes when I’m careless, I believe the wound is also the place where the skin reencounters itself, asking of each end, where have you been?” On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a tribute to the fragility and beauty of all that makes us human.
It is a beautifully crafted and intimate story.
Vuong’s background as a poet is evident throughout the novel. At times, his prose veers into the lane of verse. What can’t be said in prose is said in verse; paragraphs become one sentence; a sentence distilled to one word. It is a book to be savored. You should take time - time to reflect on the depth of experience, the complexity of the relationships, and Vuong’s prose. To devour this book would do a disservice to what Vuong has accomplished.
Vuong’s narrative contributes to present national discussions on such big topics as the immigrant experience, racism, queer identity, the opioid crisis, and the impact of trans-generational trauma. The novel, though, never feels like it is about “big important topics.” It remains about one man and his experience. It is a beautifully crafted and intimate story.
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is an important and necessary book and Vuong’s voice needs to be heard. Little Dog tells his mother, “The truth is I am worried they will get us before they get us.” It is necessary to hear the voices of queer writers of color. It is necessary to hear the voices of the immigrant experience. It is necessary to hear of the lasting traumatic impacts of war.
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a story necessary for our time.
“Who will be lost in the story we tell ourselves? Who will be lost in ourselves? A story, after all, is a kind of swallowing. To open a mouth, in speech, is to leave only the bones, which remain untold.”