On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019) By Ocean Vuong

 

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a novel of incredibly painful memories told in a beautifully written, hopefully cathartic, letter.  The author, and the book’s main character, are Amerasians, a termed coined to define children born of Vietnamese women and American soldiers during the Vietnam War.  These children have had to navigate many issues in their lives.   

The letter writer is a young man living in Hartford, CT.  He was born in Vietnam near the end of the war. The English translation of his name is Little Dog.  His mother gave him this name, because she hoped it would help him be "overlooked" by many evils: napalm bombs, American guns, Viet Cong guns, and the taunts of those who knew his mother slept with American soldiers.  Post-war, Little Dog, his mother Mai, and Grandmother Lan will be treated horribly because they were considered traitors.  Eventually they will make their way to a refugee camp in the Philippines.  An American soldier, who may or may not be the boy’s biological father, will help them resettle in the States -- and then disappears from the story. 

Little Dog grows up as an immigrant living in a low/no income neighborhood of Hartford; he will learn ESL and begin school; neither his mother nor grandmother will learn English. They exist on his mother’s meager income from working in a nail salon.  Both the mother, and to a lesser extent the grandmother, suffer from PTSD.  Once he becomes a teenager, Little Dog will work summers on a farm on the outskirts of town.  There he will work with and becomes friends with the grandson of the farm’s owner, a friendship that will develop into a closeted relationship.  Dealing with his own issues, the grandson will progressively slip into a severe opiate addiction and die of an overdose.

The novel/letter is Little Dog’s attempt to make sense of this life.  

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, is written by Ocean Vuong, an Amerasian born in 1982.  He is one of three millennial authors I have read in the past year or so who are already racking up literary awards.  The other two are: Pajtim Statovci, an immigrant to Finland, born in Kosovo in 1992, who wrote My Cat Yugoslavia; and Tommy Orange, a member of the Cheyenne Nation, author of There There, born in California in 1982.  Each of these books deals with the survival skills needed to grow up as a minority inside a dominate culture.