Ocean Vuong’s reflective and soul-baring novel ‘On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous’ is hands down the best thing that I have read all year. I didn’t have to think about giving this book a five star rating at all, from the opening chapter I knew that this book was going to change my life — and it has.
In ‘On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous‘, What starts out as a heartfelt letter addressed to Vuong’s own mother soon becomes a sprawling dreamscape in which memories collide with bedtime stories, real heartache and secrets all spilled out in fragments and spirals to an emotional and impactful conclusion that completely changed the way that I look at the world, at communication and at art.
The theme of language is an obvious one to point out when you consider that this book is addressed to someone who cannot read. In an anecdote shared by Vuong himself, his mother lashes out at him as he attempts to teach her to read his favourite book. In another, his mother explains that he needs to stand up for himself because she doesn’t have the language to defend him.
Vuong shares the pressure of being the “translator” of his own family, of bridging the gap between his mother and America when they moved to the states, and all the experiences of coming to a strange, sometimes unwelcoming new world. Vuong talks about commas, ellipses, about the first book he ever loved and what it is to be a writer – all things that his own mother wasn’t able to understand. It all comes together as Vuong initiates a conversation about poetry, about destruction and about beauty, and part of this novel’s tragedy is that as someone that has fallen in love with his writing and his words, it’s almost unimaginable to me that his mother might not be able to read them.
“It is no accident, Ma, that the comma resembles a fetus— that curve of continuation. We were all once inside our mothers, saying with our entire curved and silenced selves, more, more, more. I want to insist that are being alive is beautiful enough to be worthy of replication. And so what? So what if all I ever made of my life was more of it?”
– ‘On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous’ – Ocean Vuong
Vuong is thoughtful with each story that he puts down onto paper. He finds ways to tell us about his life through the fantastical lens of childhood and somehow is able to cut through it with nightmarish truths about his experiences, empathetic towards those in his life even in cases where he has been hurt. This book to me, is all about understanding. Later in the novel, when Vuong is posed a question about art – I won’t tell you what it is – it occurred to me that the book is an attempt at an answer to it. This book doesn’t pretend to have all the answers, but is incredibly engaging and heartfelt as it searches for and uncovers them anyway.
‘On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous’ is honest, cutting and lyrical as the narrative bobs in and out of different periods of Vuong’s life and through his experiences as a writer, an immigrant, a gay man, and most importantly of all, as a son. With expert precision, Vuong’s narrative voice, named “Little Dog” after an affectionate childhood nickname, guides the reader in and out of a collection of memories, and imaginings of stories that he was told as a child. Each scene, beautifully painted by Vuong’s poetic and entrancing descriptions, is seemingly disconnected at first, but stitched together by the constant that is Vuong’s attempt to use these scenes to understand where it is that he came from, and where it is that he is going.
A must-read, life changing book that had me by my throat the entire time. It broke my heart and mended it five times over, and I can’t wait to revisit it in a couple of months to see what new understandings I can gleam from it.
MAISIE VIOLET WICKS 