Delicate Balance of Beauty & Pain in On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

photo: www.amazon.com

I don't like hardback books, and it forever grinds my gears that books come out in hardback first, as I have to wait months to buy my own copy in paperback. Reading is a physical experience for me, not just mental, and paperbacks are more comfortable, they're smoother on the hands, the pages rustle softer, they give, whereas hardbacks are rigid, and the book jacket perpetually slides off beneath my fingers. Paperbacks are truly superior in my mind, which is why, when I buy a hardcover novel, it's worth noting.

I just couldn't wait for a paperback version of Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, and I knew I wanted my own copy to keep (libraries are great but sometimes you just need to own a book on your own shelves). So I broke down and sat with a hardback for the first time in a while.

It's hard to give a plot synopsis of this novel, as it doesn't follow the "typical" narrative structure. Essentially, a young man sits down to write a letter to his mother, a Vietnamese American immigrant who can't read English. In this way, he's able to "tell" her everything he's never been able to tell her in person, the knowledge that she'll never be able to read it giving him the freedom to express everything.

The narrator, Little Dog, moves through the past, present, and small stories and anecdotes about his life in Connecticut and his mother and grandmother's past in Vietnam. He tells of his mother's toxic-fume-inhaling, back-breaking work in a nail salon. His grandmother meeting and falling in love with an American soldier, Little Dog's grandfather, a kind man whom he still visits. His first lover, Trevor, and the nights they shared in a barn, and cruising down empty streets on their bikes, blasting 50 Cent.

This novel touches on so much, from language, art, and family to identity, race, queerness, and the opioid crisis. Mostly, though, it is Little Dog coming to understand himself and the place he and his family truly occupy in the world.

I teared up several times while reading this, and often paused to admire the pure beauty of Vuong's language and metaphors. This novel's emotional depth is astounding, the language lyrical and intricate, and the scenes vivid, sometimes simultaneously heart-wrenching, soul-crushing, and full of warmth.

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A diamond covered in blood is still a diamond, and by peeling away the raw red of being a queer Asian immigrant, of being in love, of being unsure of who one really is, of just being, Vuong reveals that the diamond, no matter how choked by clotted blood, is still there, shining with incandescent beauty.

Vuong shows grit and real pain, from animal cruelty to playground insults, drug abuse, war, and cancer, but the novel refuses to stay in any of those places. Little Dog walks through all of those fires, acknowledging the burn but still forging on. With all of these different subjects, the book easily could have become messy, and there were times when I thought, Oh, we're going to bring X into this too? But on the whole, the disparate threads wove together to paint a novel not so much about one thing, but one person, and all of the wildly different people and experiences that touch Little Dog's life.

When I read the end of the third-to-last chapter, it was so beautiful that I thought it was the end of the novel. I actually still like the end of that chapter more than the actual ending, which is why the twenty or so pages after felt a bit anticlimactic. I understand Vuong's rationale for returning to a memory of Little Dog and his mother, such as coming full-circle with the beginning of the novel and making the ending more complex, but that third-to-last chapter, while an "easier" ending, touched me more emotionally, and I wished I had ended on that note.

Vuong is probably the closest anyone can get to a literary rockstar these days. Even people who aren't big on poetry and literature seem to know his name. I've never had the privilege to meet him, but I've read several interviews and podcasts he's been featured on. His voice has a quiet weight, a soft heft, and I am grateful to him for speaking frankly, beautifully, and unpretentiously, and using his platform to grow empathy.

(edit: Since writing this post, I did meet Ocean Vuong on the streets of Atlanta, and he was just as kind as I imagined him!)

9/10 📕