On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

⊳ On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
⊳ Ocean Vuong
⊳ 2019

Some books are able to tell stories about people I never met, places I never visited and life conditions I’m barely able to imagine and still touch me in a very personal way. I think this quality of both universality and particularity is a signifier of good literature. It’s rare but can be found in any genre of cultural representation. This time it’s found in a poetic autobiographical novel of a queer Vietnamese-American immigrant.

Using images and memories, both his own and inherited, Vuong weaves a story where the past and the present intersects. Myths and war stories from Vietnam meets the suburban American landscape where racist and patriarchal structures turns Vuong’s own body into a war zone. His queer, Asian, non-masculine body becomes a signifier where the complex reality of his refugee experience is acted out. Violence as love, violence because of the lack of words, violence as how the American society slowly kills generations way too early – through war, through poverty, through drugs. The American dream as a story of loss, of losing people and of Vuong saving them through his words. Where language and traditional narration is too narrow to be able to convey the stories of lives lived at American soil. Vuong bends the linear narration to fit a life story that exceeds the boundaries of what have been allowed to be said out loud.

This book has taught me about life and love in a way that no other book has in a very long time. There’s no reason for you to not allow it to touch your soul too.

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