On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

''On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous'' is the debut novel by Vietnamese American poet Ocean Vuong, published by Penguin Press on June 4, 2019. An epistolary novel, it is written in the form of a letter from a Vietnamese American son to his illiterate mother. It was a finalist for the 2020 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and was longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction.

Plot

The novel is written in the form of a letter by a young Vietnamese American nicknamed Little Dog, whose life mirrors that of Ocean Vuong. The letter is written to Little Dog's mother Hong, more often called or translated as Rose (''hồng''). The novel has a nonlinear narrative structure.

The novel also recounts the life of Little Dog's grandmother, Lan, who escapes an arranged marriage during the Vietnam War and becomes a prostitute. She's four months pregnant when she meets a white American soldier. They marry and she gives birth to a child, Rose. Later, when Rose is Little Dog's mother, she is barely literate, having left school at the age of five when her schoolhouse in Vietnam collapsed during an American napalm raid. She suffers from posttraumatic stress disorder as a result. Rose marries an abusive man but eventually separates from him.

Working in a nail salon, she struggles as a single parent living in Hartford, Connecticut with her son and her mother Lan. Living in America as refugees, the three can barely speak English. Little Dog, who is gay, is abused by his mother throughout his childhood. Halfway through the novel, Little Dog meets a young white man named Trevor while working on a tobacco farm one summer, and the two begin a romantic relationship. Trevor eventually becomes addicted to opioids and later overdoses and dies.

Reception

Critical response

The novel debuted at number six on ''The New York Times'' Hardcover Fiction best-sellers list for the week ending June 8, 2019. It spent six weeks on the list.

''Kirkus Reviews'', in a rave review, wrote, "The result is an uncategorizable hybrid of what reads like memoir, bildungsroman, and book-length poem. More important than labels, though, is the novel's earnest and open-hearted belief in the necessity of stories and language for our survival. A raw and incandescently written foray into fiction by one of our most gifted poets." Ron Charles of ''The Washington Post'' praised the novel, calling it "permanently stunning". In his review for ''Time'', Vietnamese-American novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen wrote, "Vuong refuses to be embarrassed. He transforms the emotional, the visceral, the individual into the political in an unforgettable–indeed, gorgeous–novel, a book that seeks to affect its readers as profoundly as Little Dog is affected". Writing for the ''Los Angeles Times'', Steph Cha called the novel "a book of sustained beauty and lyricism, earnest and relentless, a series of high notes that trembles exquisitely almost without break." Writing in ''The New Yorker'', Jia Tolentino sees the "structural hallmarks of Vuong's poetry—his skill with elision, juxtaposition, and sequencing" in the novel. Heller McAlpin, writing for NPR, said that "Vuong's language soars as he writes of beauty, survival, and freedom". E. M. Tran, in the ''Harvard Review'', found the novel's genre difficult to categorize but saw genre as beside the point, as "This writer puts into his letters all of his hurt, happiness, and self-discovery—and in giving a name to those memories and experiences, he brings them into being."

Dwight Garner of ''The New York Times'' gave the novel a mixed review, writing, "Vuong's writing about nail salons, and the way mothers raised their children in them, is moving and rarely less than excellent. ''On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous'' is, at the same time, filled with showy, affected writing, with forced catharses and swollen quasi-profundities. There are enough of these that this novel's keel can lodge in the mud." Tessa Hadley, in ''The Guardian'', found the subject matter moving but stated that "the flow of the story is freighted with too much of a different kind of writing: an explicit commentary on the meaning of what's happening, or a sort of choric lyrical lamenting between scenes."

Censorship

In March 2023, the Conroe Independent School District removed the book from libraries, citing low circulation. Vuong and PEN America labeled the removal a book ban, and Vuong offered to send free copies of the book to local LGBTQ organizations.

In April 2024, a teacher at the International School Ho Chi Minh City handed out the novel to students, resulting in a post on an online group for parents calling the book "pornographic" and inappropriate for students. The school took back the books and reprimanded the teacher. Nguyen Nguyen of the Vietnamese government body Authority of Publication, Printing and Distribution attributed the reaction to differing views about whether children should learn about sexual matters.

Accolades

Listicles

Most Anticipated Books

Year-End Lists

Adaptation

A film adaptation of the novel by A24 was announced on the December 21, 2020, episode of ''The A24 Podcast''. Bing Liu, director of Oscar-nominated documentary ''Minding the Gap'', was attached to adapt the novel to screen. However, in an April 2022 profile in ''The New Yorker'', Ocean Vuong announced they had recently finished writing the screenplay for the film.

Notes

References

{{Authority control

2019 American novels
2019 debut novels
2019 LGBTQ-related literary works
Novels by Ocean Vuong
Penguin Press books
Epistolary novels
American bildungsromans
Fiction about refugees and displaced people
Novels set in Vietnam
Novels set in Connecticut
American Book Award–winning works
2010s LGBTQ novels
American LGBTQ novels
Novels about gay topics
Novels about substance abuse
Novels about heroin addiction
Nonlinear narrative novels