'ON EARTH WE'RE BRIEFLY GORGEOUS' by Ocean Vuong

Sometimes from the depths of the vast sea of current modern-day writers an unexpected pearl surfaces and casts such a warm light and brightness as to make everything else appear lacking by comparison.

Such is the case with Ocean Vuong’s first novel ‘On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous’. This beautiful young Vietnamese American poet, already a recipient of the T.S. Eliot Prize for his poetry, has tried something quite daring in writing what is essentially an autobiography, but an uncanny one, because it weaves together facts and emotions to craft the story of his and his family’s life. In it, Vuong holds nothing back and delicately, but resolutely exposes everything about himself. He renders himself entirely vulnerable to the point where the reader feels slightly uncomfortable. Vuong experiments with a language that is always poetic, but also at times so imaginative and original, as to appear to be the discovery of a new unexplored place, one in which a style without precedent is being conceived. This is especially surprising coming from an author who only learnt to read at the age of eleven and who suspects that dyslexia runs in his family.

“We weren’t rowing, but adrift. We were clinging to a mother the size of a raft until the mother grew stiff with sleep. And we soon fell silent as the raft took us all down this great brown river called America, finally happy.”

The novel is in the form of a letter from the author (Little Dog) to his mother. They are refugees from Vietnam living in the U.S., but his mother can’t read and works in a nail salon. She’s also clearly scarred by the trauma of the Vietnam war.

“You’re a mother, Ma. You’re also a monster. But so am I – which is why I can’t turn away from you. Which is why I have taken god’s loneliest creation and put you inside it.”

On the background of vivid recollections of the Vietnam war, the novel unravels into a coming-of-age story of a young man, the impressionist style reminiscence of the author’s first love, the depiction of his profound yet complicated relationship with the women in his life (mainly his mother and his grandmother) and of the ruthless and overwhelming hopelessness of poverty.

“In the nail salon, sorry is a tool one uses to pander until the word itself becomes currency. …Being sorry pays, being sorry even, or especially, when one has no fault, is worth every self-deprecating syllable the mouth allows. Because the mouth must eat.”

Vuong shows quite some pluck by openly discussing the issue of being mixed race, a theme which is introduced when he meets his American stepgrandfather. In the age of ‘Black Lives Matter’, the subject of being mixed race doesn’t get much coverage. That’s possibly because it is unsettling to others when someone is mixed race and they can’t be placed, they can’t easily be pigeonholed. It feels unsatisfactory to all, destabilising. It undermines the existing dualistic view of society and challenges the polarising forces currently shaping the socio-political discourse on race and ethnicity. In my opinion, this is one of the most significant topics of the book. Being mixed race can be seen as a curse, a guaranteed foundation for an identity crisis. A mixed-race individual may lack a sense of belonging and may be either subtly or overtly rejected by both of the ethnic groups that begot him/her. On the other hand, being multi-ethnic can also be a source of great self-confidence – having the opportunity to draw from more than one heritage and recognise and accept one’s uniqueness.

“…I was wrong, Ma. We were born from beauty.”

Overall, Vuong’s first novel is somewhat flawed, but for this very reason even more relatable, and a bit uneven in terms of the quality of the writing. I feel that some subject matters are dealt with better than others. For example, I personally found the story of his first love not altogether convincing, but the account of his relationship with his mother, aunt and grandmother and the evocation of the Vietnam war utterly real, wonderful and moving. I view this book as a love letter to these women - Vuong has bravely and touchingly written the story they could never write for themselves.

“I remember cupping the ash and writing the words live live live on the foreheads of the three women sitting in the room. How the ash eventually hardened into ink on a blank page. How there’s ash on this very page. How there’s enough for everyone.”

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