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ye_li's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Graphic: Homophobia, Racism, and Violence
Moderate: Bullying, Child abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Sexual content, Abortion, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis
rearic's review against another edition
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Moderate: Homophobia and Sexual content
Minor: Domestic abuse and Schizophrenia/Psychosis
gw3nj4n's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Graphic: Addiction, Domestic abuse, and Drug abuse
Moderate: Alcoholism, Homophobia, and Mental illness
morriganslibrary's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Graphic: Drug use
Moderate: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, and Homophobia
handful_of_frogs's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Graphic: Addiction, Child abuse, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Homophobia, Racism, Sexual content, Blood, Excrement, Grief, and Death of parent
emi98's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.5
Ocean Vuong, in interviews like the New Yorker, actually changes his life story a bunch of times (ie. when he started reading), so we don't know what is actually true. As well, he actually described himself as middle class, and that type of narrative is "exotic" (kill me please) so this is something that should be considered an "luxury reading experience". Actually, one of my first initial thoughts after reading this was wondering if I was reading Rupi Kaur if she was on a post-secondary institution salary and used a thesaurus more--- this is the attitude that is comparable, I believe. This is the kind of prose and storytelling that sells, really, only now it can be marketed as "uplifting marginalized voices."
- "This book fucking wrecked me (no i didn't cry because everything inside me was dead anyways) BUT when I say everything— e v e r y t h i n g— I felt reading this book: it all transcends and escalates into something that is literally close to basic divination. Basically this book gave me superpowers I didn't know I had."
- "This is one of those books that reminds me why I read. Sure, I read for pleasure and to keep at bay anxieties and worries that otherwise occupy my mind (that’s what my romance/chick-lit stacks are for) but my true love for the written word came from discovering the beauty of depth and emotion that’s hidden within the lyrical prose of select writers. To say that the writing in this book is gorgeous would be an understatement. There is one measure I use to determine if I find a particular writer/book worth of high praise and that’s if it makes me jealous. And boy am I jealous of Vuong’s ability to write so rawly that it almost bruises you.
- "I’ve forgotten how much I love to stare at a phrase and reread it in my head until it involuntarily imprints itself in my memory. I tend to read a lot of “feel good, easy to digest” books with simple writing, for the obvious fact that I won’t dwell on them, I won’t torture myself with existential questions and most importantly I can file them away as soon as I’m done. There will be no extra burden on my mind, I won’t obsess for days questioning life, meaning, history, etc. But sometimes I want to invite that kind of reaction, I want to feel, I wanna be awed and lured in by gorgeous words that cut deep and then I wanna be healed of their bruising force, by extending my own understanding and contemplation to their meaning and purpose."
- "Sometimes, a book just hits you. I read 200+ books a year. This month, I’ve read almost a book a day. When I’m reading that much, it can just be because the stars aligned and gave me an insane amount of free time and I chose to spend it all on Bettering Myself Through Literature, but more often, it’s because I’m trying to escape from my snoozefest daily life and my annoying brain. Currently, it’s the latter. When I read that much, it can put the stories at a distance. Or really I want to immerse myself so much that I remove myself from the equation altogether and it’s all story, no impact on me. But sometimes you get a good book at the perfect time and it cuts all that away, whether you want it to or not. This book is so, well, gorgeous. The writing and the story, the characters, the setting - none of it gives you a moment’s mercy. It’s unrelenting in its pain and its reality and its loveliness. I kept thinking this was a memoir, because fiction that feels like this is so rare, an incredible feat. For the last 25% of this book, I kept thinking it had to be over at the next page, or the next - every sentence felt like another paper cut, every paragraph break a scrape, chapter endings f*cking road rash. It was unbearable. I had tears in my eyes through a third of it and I pride myself on being the coolest and least emotional person alive." (this one is annoying because the quantity =/ quality, and most of her reviews are for YA LOL)
Vuong is a poet first, and a contemporary one at that---something that is painfully obvious while reading. Here are some examples from the book that I think was just Bad and emphasizes this fact:
- "It's not fair that the word laughter is trapped inside slaughter." (This could be a pixelated meme on top of Garfield eating lasagna and no one would be able to tell.)
- "You one told me that the human eye is god's loneliest creation. How so much of the world passes through the pupil and still it holds nothing. The eye, alone in its socket, doesn't even know there's another one, just like it, an inch away, just as hungry, empty." (He should've stopped halfway here)
- "His cock, touched at the tip with the dark inside me…" (this is shit. Like, literal poop he is referring to)
- "A page, turning, is a wing lifted with no twin, and therefore no flight. And yet we are moved." (Why? Why say this? A quote that resonates a lot more with me, and what I think is what the author intended for people to, er, feel re:pages/books/reading, is one by Natsume Soseki in Kokoro: "Words are not meant to stir the air only: they are capable of moving greater things.")
- "The thing about beauty is that it's only beautiful outside of itself." (Say this out loud. Please. Tell me how you feel after.)
- "They say nothing last forever but I'm writing you in the voice of an endangered species" (This is what charity commercials use to donate to WWF)
- "Our hands empty except for our hands." (Just shut up!)
- "She’s a ruin no one can point to. A ruin without location, like a language." (Why is it that when we run out of good comparisons a writer then compare the thing to a lost language?)
- "But the work somehow sutured a fracture inside me." (Someone call Dr. House please!)
- "What if art was not measured by quantity but by ricochets? What if art was not measured?" (This is ironic considering that he measures his work---of which he actually writes very few poems every year---in the accolades he has. Sure, good for him, but I hate artists who pretend they're above it when they're clearly not)
- "Only when I utter the word do I realize that rose is also the past tense of rise. That in calling your name I am also telling you to get up." (Someone please save me now.)
- "He had a thick face and pomaded hair, even at this hour, like Elvis on his last day on earth." (You ain't nothing but a hound dog!)
It ends up giving the reader such a detached view on the book; the narrator is detached as well, which is strange considering we are supposed to be reading an intimate epistolary-like story here. Hollow and unsatisfying, it feels as though we are checking off some criteria on what people nowadays think is "profound"---which is to say that "profound" means not analyzing the material you read at all. I would say, paraphrased from one fellow reviewer, that it has an "amateur grasp on melodrama…rhetorical questions don't lead to pondering but dead ends", which, again, as a writer, I assume you would want to make the reader think or feel, not just be stuck on the dramatization of "ohhh the pain!!!!!" In the end, the writing cannot be described as 'raw'; instead, I would say it’s the opposite: polished, overwrought, artificial---the random word associations to make these nonsensical phrases deep ends up making this much worse.
I also hated how he depicted working poor people, and people with addiction as well using the Opioid crisis here; which is to say, he used them as sprinkling some type of social commentary without doing much of anything with it (it's not revolutionary just for mentioning these problems, unfortunately). Seeing the writer in interviews talking about writing a novels and rejecting "Western colonial storytelling" (which is exactly what he does not do, amongst other non-self-aware commentary), so I absolutely feel crazy watching people die on this hill for him. DO NOT RECOMMEND.
Graphic: Animal cruelty
Moderate: Addiction, Drug abuse, Drug use, Homophobia, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and War
marprokup's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Graphic: Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, and Sexual content
Moderate: Bullying, Child abuse, and War
Minor: Homophobia
leahcull45's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Drug abuse, Drug use, Hate crime, Homophobia, Miscarriage, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, and War
granasys's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, and Abortion
Moderate: Alcoholism, Death, and Homophobia
grandadnaima's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
Moderate: Drug abuse, Drug use, Hate crime, Homophobia, Physical abuse, Racism, and Death of parent