On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
Ratings423
Average rating4
Beautiful imagery and diction, though sometimes poetic to the point of being jarring or messing up reading flow. Still, really beautiful—sometimes cutting. I had to prepare myself to be in the headspace to read this because of the heaviness, sometimes.
Contains spoilers
Favorite quote:
"As a girl, you watched, from a banana grove, your schoolhouse collapse after an American napalm raid. At five, you never stepped into a classroom again. Our mother tongue, then, is no mother at all—but an orphan. Our Vietnamese a time capsule, a mark of where your education ended, ashed.
Ma, to speak in our mother tongue is to speak only partially in Vietnamese,
but entirely in war.
That night I promised myself I’d never be wordless when you needed me to speak for you. So began my career as our family’s official interpreter.
From then on, I would fill in our blanks, our silences, stutters, whenever I could. I code switched. I took off our language and wore my English, like a mask, so that others would see my face, and therefore yours."
Preciosamente escrito, te transporta a un mundo que incluso siendo real parece un sueño constante.
I love books that have language as the main theme. To put it simply, this was gorgeous.
I assume this novel was a roman à clef, written in prose, hitting you like poetry and fine art. Lyrical and visual, it's difficult to navigate because your eyes and your mind often fail to work in concert.
Your eyes, familiar with the mechanics of reading keep moving forward in the text while your mind wanders through the painting that Ocean Vuong has created with his words, so I found myself rereading passages quite often; my comprehension was still back at buffaloes careening off a cliff while my eyes had just finished a passage about monarch butterflies. The fault is mine and not the author's. I enjoyed it immensely, found the characters of Little Dog, Rose, Lan, and Trevor compelling, each in their own way, sometimes comical, occasionally infuriating, and in a few cases sadly tragic. I will reread it again, and be better prepared to go at the lazy, indulgent pace that the novel cries out for and deserves.
I absolutely loved it. It wasn't relatable but it did feel personal. It felt like I was listening to my friend tell me his story.
This book is a letter from a son to his mother. Written when he was an adult, he writes to her telling about the early life in the States as an Immigrant. In the first few pages, we share the bond that the mother and son share. They aren't particularly emotional to each other; but they surely do care for each other. In the later part of the book, we see the son navigating his life in America amidst the drug abuse, racism and gun violence. By the end, we see how the son accepts life and tries to have a closure.
I would definitely recommend this to people who find peace in sorrow (someone like me). I really like the writing and it is surely different from the other writings of literary fiction. The writing was very poetic and soon I realised that Ocean Vuong was indeed a poet. So... yeah, fans of literary fiction, pick this up now!
effectively disorienting and terrifyingly beautiful, this book will touch you. so many beautiful images and scenes that feel almost biblical in their omnipotence and truth they reveal. marks deducted because the disorientation was a bit too disorienting at points.
”Let no one mistake us for the fruit of violence — but that violence, having passed through the fruit, failed to spoil it.”
So much of this is impossibly good that anything less than the maximum rating feels cheap. It is not perfect - many times a sentence sits like a golden egg, pleased with itself at the cost of flow — but if I were Vuong's editor I'd be afraid to cut, too. And many long passages are crafted to perfection. Every other line is a gut punch, but the novel's kaleidoscopic structure is what makes it feel enormous. It resists easy synthesis but feels complete. Ocean Vuong has that (little) dog in him.
It was beautiful and the story was very rich.
I would give it 4 stars because the writing is very very poetic for a novel, which wasn't the best ever sometimes haha.
Había partes demasiado fantasiosas y poéticas en las que me perdía un poco pero me ha gustado mucho en general. También me he quedado con varias frases que dice y he llorado como una perra
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. ♡
This is, without a single doubt in my mind, the most beautiful thing I've ever read in my life.
The writing is so beautiful. I had chills down my spine so many times, and i cried a few times too.
I love how this book goes so many places and talks about mother-son relationships, immigration, racism, war, queer identity, love, sex, acceptance, cancer, death, drug abuse, nationalism, self love and so much more.
I also love how from beginning to end, the author's perception of his mother changes entirely.
In addition to that, probably my favourite thing about this book is the irony of it all. A son writing a letter to his illiterate mother. It's so much more about him acknowledging things to himself, admitting things to himself and finally expressing everything that he has the right to.
I'm so grateful I could be a part of this journey that the narrator takes.
This broke me a little, I think.
Here's some of my favourite parts of the book.
“He loves me, he loves me not, we are taught to say, as we tear the flower from it's flowerness. To arrive at love, then, is to arrive through obliteration. Eviscerate me, we mean to say, and I'll tell you the truth. I'll say yes.”“I believe the wound is also the place where the skin reencounters itself, asking of each end, where have you been? Where have we been, Ma?”
10 pages into a book and I'm already crying??
I've had this sitting on my shelf for the past few months. My friend highly praised it and became a fan of his work, so I thought it might be as life-changing for me.
However, I did not expect my eyes to water just from the first page.
I don't know WHAT exactly it is. It's a combination of knowing that it's an extremely vulnerable, heartbreaking book about his complicated relationship with his mom, the Vietnamese immigrant parent x American child aspect (I can 100% relate to), and the fact that his mom will/has passed away. It's the first time a book has made me viscerally cry like this, snot and all, and I had to put it down.
It kept making me think about my own parents and their difficult lives, my future without them, and knowing that I don't have such strong childhood memories with them, or even such strong ones now. Also, I feel like I'm kinda mourning the fact that my parents don't really have hobbies of their own now. It's mostly just housework, Youtube and TV, and it makes me sad that they didn't have as much of a chance to do and be whatever they wanted to be, and there's not much interest now.
I am so upset and MAD this book got me like this just from 10 pages. In the end, I was unable to finish it, too afraid of experiencing the pain and emotions again. It's a tough poetic read, and I didn't end up finishing it. Maybe one day, but I'm not that into poetic writing.
I liked it.
Not as much as I thought but I did, and this book was good, very good.
I like how it kinda has a poetic feel to it.
I miss you more than I remember you.
i think my tastes have changed since i started this book bc when i went back to finish it, i ended up disliking a few things about vuong's writing style. however, the plot and most other portions of the writing are beautiful! it's just that sometimes it felt like re-used madlibs; i remember __, which is to say i __.
Perro pequeño, así le llaman, así lo nombró su madre para protegerlo en un lugar donde ella no puede hacerlo. Un niño vietnamita junto a su madre, tía y abuela huyen de Vietnam hacia Estados Unidos y se establecen en el condado de Hartford, Connecticut.
Guerra, racismo, PTSD, sexualidad, adicción, belleza y muerte. Temas clave sobre los que giran las historias que le escribe perro pequeño en una carta a su madre, la cual que no sabe leer.
Aprendemos de la vida de su abuela - Lan – en Vietnam y su huida, de la niñez del protagonista como emigrante, de su primer amor, Trevor, que llaga a su vida mientras trabaja en campos de tabaco.
Nos enteramos del abuso que sufría por parte de su madre y como Lan lo reconfortaba cada vez, de las conexiones que ha desarrollado con aquellos a su alrededor y cómo los ha visto morir a causa de la adicción, siendo Trevor uno de ellos.
Esta novela epistolar está escrita con suma delicadeza y atención al detalle. La naturaleza inspira cada oración y cada capítulo. En cada página, una mariposa monarca, una hormiga, un alce, un buey y hasta bisontes.
Ocean Vuong nos da varias lecciones de vida: el amor hacia nuestros orígenes, hacia nuestros destinos y hacia nuestros seres queridos, nos enseña a vivir en el momento, a parar un segundo y mirar a nuestro alrededor y observar lo que tenemos al frente, pero más importante aún, lo que tenemos entremedias.
Para un mundo tan inmenso e infinito, estamos en él muy poco tiempo como para nunca sentirnos bellos en el más amplio sentido de la palabra.
El libro es al final, sobre las fugaces bellezas que tendemos a pasar por alto dentro de nuestras pequeñas vidas.
Beautiful, heartbreaking.
And not what I expected.
I immediately want to reread this book...and read more of Ocean Vuong's poetry.
I don't know how to review this. It was sad, poetic, tragic, beautiful and heart wrenching all at once. The stories, the way they were written and narrated, the characters, they were all...just what they were intended to be.
Throughout the whole book, I wished I knew what was real and what was fiction. I wondered after reading something sad that did the author himself go through this? Which parts were created, which were taken straight from his life. However, I did not cry despite how sad it was except for one line that triggered my tears. But I feel that I was already in my feels so the line just provoked my tear sockets.
I am glad I came across this and read it.
the writing is supreme, effortlessly an easy flow, even though at times it might be a bit too flowery, but i doubt that there's anything outgrowing fatigue towards the language. it also managed to explore on several social issues, i.e. the vietnamese history, US social problems, a.k.a. arms, overdose, violence, etc. and most importantly, the handling of grief and losses. for a coming-of-age book it doesn't cheaply treat the topics of abuse and violence in household or romantic relationships, or the intersectionality as both a queer member and a racial minority merely as a tool for recognition and exposure, there's way more layers to build upon than that. most importantly, it is a sort of intricate love between the mother and son, which does not necessarily victimise the son or the mother, yet putting them both on different sides of the same balance, untilted.
Definitely the best book I have read so far this year. It is honestly so heartbreaking the entire time - not because sad stuff happens the whole time, but because you start to carry the trauma of protagonist as he continues to talk through his experiences as they do (and don't directly) pertain to his mother.
The book itself is a letter to his mother who can't read English. It talks about the lives of him, his mother, and his grandmother through PTSD, abuse, war, drugs, culture clash/assimilation, death, and sexuality. It's definitely a heavy read, but I really liked that everything tied back into the protagonist's relationship with his mother and growing understanding/appreciation of her experiences. It's reminiscent of how relationships with your parents change throughout your life and how context/familiarity can bring you closer.