On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019) by Ocean Vuong is a luminous, heart-wrenching novel written as a letter from a Vietnamese-American son to his illiterate mother. Blending memoir and fiction, the protagonist, nicknamed “Little Dog,” recounts his childhood in Hartford, Connecticut, shaped by the intergenerational trauma of the Vietnam War, his mother’s and grandmother’s struggles as immigrants, and his own awakening as a gay man in a first love affair with a rough, opioid-addicted farm boy named Trevor.
Vuong, an acclaimed poet (Night Sky with Exit Wounds), infuses every sentence with lyrical precision, weaving themes of violence, desire, and the silences that define family history. The novel’s fragmented structure mirrors memory itself—achingly beautiful, brutal, and tender in turns.
A groundbreaking work of autofiction that redefines the immigrant narrative, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a testament to the fragile, fleeting moments that make us human.
