On Earth, We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong: Summary and Review
Ocean Vuong’s semi-autobiographical novel, On Earth, We’re Briefly Gorgeous, is written as a direct-address letter to the main character’s mother, explaining the ways she failed him when he was a young boy, and the ways he failed as her translator, in both English as language and America as culture. Written in three parts, Vuong depicts Little Dog’s boyhood, adolescence (his budding sexuality and first love, a troubled boy named Trevor) and new adulthood (mourning the death of Trevor and his grandmother).
Vuong’s novel is written in the first person to the second person, his mother, so that the experience of reading the book as an outsider is both intimate and tender; it gives the impression of being wrapped in a warm blanket by someone you love when you’re sick in bed. His primary choice of metaphor, the motif of English grammar as a vehicle for recognizing who is a “noun” and who is a “verb” or vehicle for other “nouns” to use in the story, was meta and fully relatable to me as a writer. Vuong wrote, “It’s 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,” and isn’t a comma the punctuation one uses to address a letter, the symbol after a name that says more is coming? It was especially moving that he would use English grammar as a metaphor throughout this novel, although the main character is the son of a first-generation Vietnamese immigrant, who could barely understand him when he spoke English. It’s ironic that the main character would write a novel in direct-address to her, knowing that she couldn’t read it. In this way, this book reads like an open journal entry, a forgiveness letter and an apology at once. Vuong drives this point home, in a way, when he says, “Why can’t the language of creativity be the language of regeneration?” and “I’m writing to you in the voice of an endangered species.”
Through a lens I’m familiar with (the LGBTQ+ community), I gained insight into experiences I will never have as a white woman. I was also able to connect with Vuong on the disappointment he feels about how his mother raised him but also the guilt he feels for not having enough compassion for his mother to understand her perceived shortcomings. He communicated his feelings through heartbreaking honesty while also honoring his mother, which is a delicate balance, one I’m interested in walking in my own work.