On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, the debut novel from the author of The Emperor of Gladness, is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation.
At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one’s own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.
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Book details
- Publisher
- Penguin
- Publication date
- 2021
- Print length
- 256 pages
- Language
- English
- ISBN
- 978-0525562047
Coming of Age
What to Know Before Reading On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
A tender and heartbreaking novel written as a long letter from a young man named Little Dog to his mother. Because his mother cannot read English, the letter acts as a safe space for Little Dog to share secrets, family history, and truths she may never actually see. The story moves back and forth through time, exploring how Little Dog grows up as a gay Vietnamese-American in a working-class Connecticut town. It looks closely at the heavy weight of family trauma passed down from the Vietnam War, the complicated love between a mother and her son, and the painful beauty of finding your own voice. Ultimately, the book is a poetic look at survival, identity, and what it means to be alive for just a short time on this earth.
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About the author
Ocean Vuong
“What I remember is that I was always trying to be good, but I was never good enough.”
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