Reviews with content warning for Xenophobia - On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

Sometimes books written in verse always trip me up but there are so many things about this book that just blew me away! I find that the trauma of the survivors of the Vietnam war is always told from the perspective of the Americans but telling the story from the perspective of the Vietnamese people of the generation post-Vietnam is so important because a lot of the people were born with different reactions to loud noises, specifically fireworks (thinking they’re bombs). The story of Trevor and Little Dog finding love in the tobacco fields because Trevor’s dad was Little Dog’s boss. This book is very heavy. One more thing, I loved the small moment where Little Dog is in Vietnam burying Lan’s ashes and he comes across a parade and it’s actually a way to lift people’s spirits up after the passing of someone in Their neighborhood. Using the art of Drag to bring some levity to the situation. This book is such a beautiful love letter to a parent

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robin_hood8's review against another edition

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I was out after that nauseating monkey scene, literally why. Can't say I defined any deeper meaning to that degree of animal cruelty, but apparently Vuong can find a deeper meaning in just about anything. And I mean anything. The writing had me rolling my eyes, confused as to what the book was even about, and just plain bored. I had high hopes and I rarely abandon books, but this just wasn't working for me, especially after that horrible monkey scene. This book is not properly labeled or summarized in my opinion, as I had no idea of the violence, animal cruelty, graphic sex, drugs, etc. until I gave up on it and read some reviews. Major trigger warnings for just about everything, I regret wasting my time and money on this.

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jade_smith's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

This was a gorgeous novel. Perhaps the first time I’ve felt compelled to use the word “luminous” as an adjective. Ocean Vuong’s writing is breathtakingly beautiful. This is exactly the kind of so-called purple prose that I love — it straddles the line between prose and poetry so deftly.

Part exploration of inter-generational trauma, part coming of age, part meditation on memory and the past, this is a staggering story delivered in immaculate style.

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james1star's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

This was truly an exceptional book with harrowing content juxtaposing beautiful, exquisite writing. Vuong being a poet meant his novel debut read this way but he’s also pinpoint in what he wants to say and doesn’t stray from the hard facts of this main character’s existence. It’s a letter from ‘Little Dog’ writing to his mother Rose who doesn’t speak or understand English so you can tell it’s all unashamedly honest. He speaks about a lot: the generational trauma of the Vietnam war on his mum and grandmother Lan, their journey getting to America, the relationship he had with them and child/domestic abuse faced at the hands of his mother, the immigrant experience, a relationship with a boy, Trevor, and in general what is like living in his Queer Vietnamese American body in contemporary USA. The boy he once loved deals with a opioid addiction brought on by taking Oxy and Vuong talks about this drug crisis in America, how it developed and the general destructive, horrible nature of drugs detailing addiction, overdoses and loss of so many young people to it - truly a heartbreaking fact.

I don’t have any negatives to say regarding this book, it’s difficult to read for sure but every part needs to be spoken about. Vuong portrays the story amazingly and many parts will stay with me for a long time. I underlined and saved lots of quotes, some of my absolute faves/most meaningful I’ll share here but be warned of a few spoilers.

‘The monarchs that fly south will not make it back north. Each departure, then, is final. Only their children return; only the future revisits the past.’

And a bit later: ‘Maybe a survivor is the last one to come home, the final monarch that lands on a branch already weighted with ghosts.’

‘Our mother tongue, then, is no mother at all—but an orphan […] to speak in our mother tongue if to speak only partially in Vietnamese, but entirely in war.’

‘…sometimes I don’t know what or who we are. Days I feel like a human being, while other days I feel more like a sound. I touch the world not as myself but as an echo of who I was.’

‘Your hands are hideous—and I hate everything that made them that way. I hate how they are the wreck and reckoning of a dream. […] I hate and love your battered hands for what they can never be.’

‘And because I am your son, I said, “sorry.” Because I am your son, my apology had become, by then, an extension on myself. It was my hello.’

‘I didn’t want to use the Vietnamese word for it—pê-dê—from the French pédé, short for pédéraste. Before the French occupation, our Vietnamese did not have a name for queer bodies—because they were seen, like all bodies, fleshed and of one source—and I didn’t want to introduce this part of me using the epithet for criminals.’ - this whole section exceptional and left be speechless, goosebumps all the way up my arm.

‘To see yourself still yourself is a refuge men who have not been denies cannot know.’

‘In Vietnamese, the word for missing someone and remembering them is the same: nhó. Sometimes, when you ask me over the phone, Con nhó mę knông? I flinch, thinking of you meant, Do you remember me? / I miss you more then i remover you.’

‘If, relative to the history of our planet, an individual life is so short, a blink of an eye, as they say, then to be gorgeous, even from the day you’re born to the day you die, is to be gorgeous only briefly.’

Content Warnings

erinjeanhussey's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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teh_niarr's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

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superjesssica's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

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? Yes

5.0

”I am writing you from inside a body that used to be yours. Which is to say, I am writing as a son.”

A letter from a son to his mother who cannot read. A complex and compelling non-linear story about a Vietnamese family (the boy Little Dog, his mother and grandmother) living in Hartford. The letter follows the past, present and future of Little Dog and his family, with all the pain, love and care that life brings with it.

I cried until I got a headache reading this book. It is heavy, sad and beautiful all at once. The characters are deeply flawed (as people are) and their love isn’t always pretty. Ocean Vuong’s poetic prose is slow, thoughtful and haunting. One of my favorite reads ever.

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gandalf_a's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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