On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a beautifully written memoir by Ocean Vuong. He explores his life from childhood to his twenties. Sometimes, he’s writing to his mother, trying to explain himself, reveal himself, and make sense of his life. At other times, he’s looking back at his life, writing in the third person, keeping some of the most traumatic experiences at a distance.
Ocean reveals himself bit by bit, and in doing so, portrays the people closest to him as well, particularly his mother, Hong (rose), his grandmother Lan (orchid), and his friend and first love, Trevor. Other family members, his aunt, grandfather, friends, and teachers, come and go while his father is a malevolent shadow.
Surviving, Living
Born in Ho Chi Minh City, Vuong is Vietnamese American, in a family where he takes on the role of advocate and interpreter. In this novel, he shows the hopes, challenges, and (broken) dreams of immigrant families. Words are a way to be American but writing is what saved him.
That’s what writing is, after all the nonsense, getting down so low the world offers a merciful new angle, a larger vision made of small things…
Ocean builds from memories, a life lived, remembered, combined with commentary, expositions, questions, meaning examined and explained. It’s a quest for the meaning of life, of identity and belonging. It is a story of survival, beauty, and pain. There are lots of themes in this book: domestic abuse, immigration, war, racism, identity, poverty, drug abuse, the opioid crisis, homophobia, family secrets. What does it mean to not like girls, to be Vietnamese, multiracial, American? How is a person assigned worth?
Remember: The rules, like streets, can only take you to known places. Underneath the grid is a field—it was always there—where to be lost is never to be wrong, but simply more.
I got a glimpse into Vietnamese culture, the effects of the war, and its legacy. Woven in this book is the story of immigration, of difference, and belonging. While Vuong is a poet and writer, he writes in English, in a language that his mother does not understand.
Lying on the mat, I cannot help but want us to be our own kipuka, our own aftermath, visible, but I know better.
Details Added and Missing
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous treads the line between suggestion and details. In the beginning of the book, I was a bit confused. I thought there were pieces of the story that were missing. Then my patience paid off as Ocean shared more details, conversations with his family, and explicit details of drugs and sex with Trevor. The people in the book become multidimensional. Yet, I feel like Ocean holds back from revealing parts of himself. The book feels like an exploration of discovery. There are breadcrumbs but he leaves it to us to draw our own conclusions.
Why did he really leave Hartford and what was that like? Was this an instance of him choosing himself, of escaping the mold? I’m asking a lot, for him to share his drive and he owes me nothing. Perhaps it’s easier to tell a story when there is a period, an undisputable ending. Otherwise, it’s all commas, and we’re really good at fooling ourselves. We contain multitudes.
Tears and Sadness
This book made me sad. There are happy moments and good memories but this is always an undercurrent of instability, The Vietnam war created a rocky foundation for the family, when his grandmother met, married, and was subsequently separated from the white American soldier that she had married. Ocean has his own demons to find, particularly with mental health. Will writing help stabilize his world?
The truth is none of us are enough enough. But you know this already.
These words made me cry. I think to me it encapsulates desperation, a cruel joke, the bounds we can’t escape, with no one to pass us a kiss and a key. Yet, I also smile, because Ocean has a beautiful mastery of words.
… freedom, I am told, is nothing but the distance between the hunter and its prey …
Reflect…
In a world myriad as ours, the gaze is a singular act: to look at something is to fill your whole life with it, if only briefly.
I know this feeling well…
Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you’ve been ruined.
Reaching for Hope
If you were drowning and became water, what does that mean? If you can find a moment of closeness, sharing a story, sharing touch, is that connection, and is it enough?
And like a word, I hold no weight in this world yet still carry my own life. And I throw it ahead of me until what I left behind becomes exactly what I’m running toward — like I’m part of a family.
Maybe we don’t have to chase being good, and maybe what we have can be something like enough.
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