on earth we're briefly gorgeous
the book
“Sometimes being offered tenderness, feels like the very proof that you’ve been ruined.”
I've been wanting to read this book for a long time.
Vuong is an award winning poet - this is his first novel and it's lovely.
It would be easy for this book to be labelable - Vuong is a Vietnamese-American gay poet and while the book is an autobiographical novel, touching on the immigrant experience, poverty, homosexuality and domestic violence, none of those things define it.
Instead what happens is that Vuong describes tenderness amidst the violence of his childhood and tries to find the beauty in his mother's own experiences of violence. Once we're expecting violence in the narrative, we cringe during a sexual encounter gone wrong, anticipating some sort of outburst but our expectation are confounded.
The novel is a wonderful short read but I'd hesitate to say that this is for everyone. The form is almost meandering, obviously influenced by his poetic background, some of the observations are on the nose and there isn't much of a plot in some ways, the novel almost creating an impression of events rather than a history which could bother some. It didn't bother me.
A Should Read
ideas and quotes
autobiography
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is written, loosely, as a letter to the narrator’s mother, which she will never read.
Dealing with your own history is fraught - witness the reaction to work like that of Karl Ove Knausgaard as disgruntled relatives come out to pay their disrespects to your work, fairly or unfairly. Having just written a memoir, I could identify with having to mind the feelings of others in the narrative and trying to remain objective about yourself.
The difference here is that Little Dog's mother can't read, the implication being that she will never be able to understand this lengthy letter addressed to her.
There's a beautiful sentence,
Dear Ma, I am writing to reach you — even if each word I put down is one word further from where you are
Each word is just something else she doesn't understand, also moving the author to their destination of becoming a successful writer in a world that she will never be able to join. It also captures the inadequacy and inaccuracy of language when describing another person - how can you possible do justice to someone in their entirety within the constrictions of the printed word?
violence
Little Dog's history is one of violence - he was born out of a violent relationship, his mother's birth was the result of a violent act. Violence is what he expects from communication with others but without it he wouldn't exist. Without it, the women in his family wouldn't possess the resilience that he so admires. Violence is an inextricable part of him.
Where do you see violence in your life? For many of us, violence is a bygone memory, something that we'll never confront ourselves. We merely see it represented on screens, real and hyperreal images flashing before us from other places than our own. As discussed in Tribe, the lack of violence in our lives leaves us without a natural proving ground and creates boredom, evident in Trevor's descent into drug abuse and risky behaviour.
the gay experience
Little Dog is obviously homosexual, like Vuong himself. While Vietnam venerated the genderless, his status as somewhat effeminate and ethereal is dangerous for him in the US.
One of the strengths of Vuong's book is in its depiction of the gay experience as both normal and exceptional. We experience beauty through his narrative. The book reminded me of Less - the narrator, an author himself, is decried as a 'bad gay' for continuously portraying being gay as a trial and a misery. Vuong does something similar here, not using gayness as a way to deliver a misery narrative but as a vehicle to experience love and transcendence.
being a mongrel
The narrator Little Dog is a fictionalised version of Vuong - his characterisation as a dog is to avoid being seen as dangerous. The US is in the process of becoming a mongrel nation, with immigrants like Vuong coming from all over the world to change the idea of what being an American is. In this way, is status as harmless is quite subversive and plays on the idea that immigrants come to take from a host nation in a parasitic manner. There's a power in powerlessness though - as Little Dog is nurtured by Trevor and survives his childhood, as his mother and grandmother survive their harsh circumstances, their powerlessness gives them the ability to survive. It's the inability to tell their story that really robs them of agency and by writing the book, Vuong has done that for them.
There's a great quote from the real Vuong, recalling something that his mother told him when he left to move to New York:
“She told me: it’s OK for people to think you’re a fool.” Vuong laughed and said: “Really? Why?” and his mother replied: “Because then they’ll tell you everything about them. You can see them from all their angles.” It’s the wisdom of his life. The subversive power of being “a small, queer, person of colour” is that Vuong has the ability to see everything. He smiles. “Nobody hides themselves from a fool.”
Related
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous - read the original poem
Life Sentences - Trick Mirror author Jia Tolentino’s New Yorker piece on the novel
Literary Friction - podcast interview where Vuong displays some more nuanced opinions than his hosts are expecting - listen here