I finished On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous sitting in the passenger seat of my car. The tollway roared beneath me. Closing the book, I looked out over the empty land blurring past my window and said to my partner, “God damn. That was a book.” I couldn’t think of any other way to describe it at first. The words needed time to ripen. 

Our trip took us, by sheer coincidence, to Hartford, Connecticut. We had a two-night stay to visit a friend who lives in the area. I looked at the streets we passed; the names, shops, weedy sidewalks and colorful murals. Wrong turns on confusing New England roads led me to recognize names and places Little Dog had been. A trip down a street of empty grass lots guarded by chain-linked fences made me think of a young Little Dog clambering over those fences to pick flowers for his grandmother. On Earth, already dancing on the lines of autobiography, felt real, alive. I thought if I sat on the corner long enough, sections of the book might play out in front of my eyes. 

Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is an epistolary, autofiction novel in which the main character, Little Dog, writes to his illiterate mother. He shares memories, research, philosophy, and imaginings, often of what his mother and grandmother’s life might have looked like in Vietnam. The book is non-linear, jumping time and place to blend memory and understanding. It is at once a coming-of-age story, an immigrant story, a queer story, and a story of grief. From Tiger Woods to anal sex, On Earth doesn’t shy away from difficult topics; it embraces them.

It was an intense read for a road trip. Traveling is an ideal time to blast through books and I usually finish one or two by the time I return home. This time was different. The book bled emotion, each vignette fiercely told in words so visually vibrant they knocked you off your feet. Without my initial research, I still would’ve known Vuong was a poet. The prose put me in mind of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between The World and Me, the words curated to paint a specific picture in the mind’s eye. Coates’ and Vuong’s styles are very different but they still manage to create books so heavy with feeling that you need to digest them in pieces to keep from being overwhelmed. On Earth was the only book I finished on my road trip and, even then, only barely. The visuals and emotions were so much that I had to sip at it, like tea still too hot to drink. 

Vuong’s prose works best in the vignettes of memories, or imagined memories that he creates for Rose and Lan. He refuses to turn away from uncomfortable imagery or metaphor, leading to fully realized scenes grounded in complexity. Where the prose falters, though, is when Vuong tries to impart a philosophical, personal truth, or ask a rhetorical question. They pop up in random places, some of them battling against clichés, bringing even the most immersive sections to a stop. For instance, “I know. It’s not fair that the word laughter is trapped inside slaughter,” pulled me out of the novel immediately, the cliché slapping me in the face. The following line, “We’ll have to cut it open, you and I, like a newborn lifted, red and trembling, from the just-shot doe,” thankfully redeems it, but there are more of these one-offs, not all with redeeming follow-ups. There is a sense in having Little Dog’s thoughts turn to bigger questions while in the midst of heavy grief and questioning; unfortunately, many of these broke my absorption with the novel, albeit briefly. 

The careful use of imagery and language, however, did elevate the narrative style. A non-linear narrative often needs something to tie it together and Vuong’s use of historical research, as well as his ruminations on philosophy, manage to bind the novel into a united whole. Memories intertwine with facts and disparate ideas, like the chapter with Lan trying to cross a border into safety with young Rose also containing the story of the men eating macaque’s brains alive; or the history of Tiger Wood’s family alongside Little Dog visiting his white grandfather. Much like poetry, these sections become referential to each other, much like how real memory works. Vuong mentions it too when speaking about how Lan’s stories would change ever so slightly: “… [T]he past never a fixed and dormant landscape but one that is re-seen.” Juxtaposing different, non-linear memories, ideas, and histories together creates a vision of a life, seen through the eyes of the person who experienced it. 

With so many subjects broached with care and empathy, it’s hard to argue there is one theme to the book. Instead, there are several, which brings to mind an idea sprung from feminist circles in the 60s and 70s: The personal is political. Everything in a person’s life, whether it be their family make-up, who they love, or what they experience is tied back to the political landscape they live in. A Vietnamese immigrant growing up in poverty, everything and everyone that Little Dog and his loved ones come into contact with have roots in the society they live in. When Little Dog was bullied and his mother slapped him, she said, “You have to find a way, Little Dog… You have to because I don’t have the English to help you.” This experience with racism and subsequent parental abuse puts me back in mind of Coates, who wrote about how his parents would beat him for minor infractions, his father saying, “Either I can beat him, or the police.” Both are trying to protect their children, “toughen them up” for the country they live in, where racism thrives with rare repercussions. It turns the subject of child abuse into a complicated intersection of intergenerational trauma, wealth disparities, and race. 

The person as the political is especially clear in the sections with Trevor. For all his love for Little Dog, Trevor still battles the internalized homophobia, hoping that he’ll grow out of it. Combined with his fatal addiction to opioids, brought on by Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family pushing Oxycontin for even minor pain relief, Trevor’s entire existence encapsulates an entire cross-section of poor, rural America. Rarely does Vuong call out specific politics but when he does it’s clear this book is meant to comment on all these things. “They will tell you that to be political is to be merely angry, and therefore artless, depthless, “raw”, and empty. They will speak of the political with embarrassment, as if speaking of Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. They will tell you great writing “breaks free” from the political…” But, Vuong goes on to prove, everything is.

I enjoyed this novel. Vuong’s voice is fully realized, making even the sections that required emotional fortitude to traverse a worthy investment. I don’t know if I recommend it for everyone; there is a style here, and maybe not a style that will click with some, and there are sections that are genuinely difficult to read. That’s the beauty of it, though: life isn’t easy to read. It’s complex, it’s confusing, it’s not always fun- but it is beautiful. 

If you have any thoughts (there are a lot to have) about On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, feel free to comment below and let me know what you think! I hope you’ll join me for July’s book of the month as we make a short sidestep from autofiction to nonfiction, and dig a little further into mental health. This next book has been on my radar since the beginning and I can’t wait to share it with you.