On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong. After being born to Rose and his estranged father in Vietnam, the narrator and his family flee their country and immigrate to the United States. Little Dog says earlier that monarchs pass messages and memories, and here he suggests that such memories can overwhelm the butterfly and drop it to the ground, essentially killing it (“deleting” it “from the story”). Paul is clearly still in love with Lan after all these years, and this again underscores the power of memory. While this coming-out story, which dominates the middle section of the book, is a tale of a desired kind of obliteration, the final section addresses a more total annihilation.

There are enough of these that this novel’s keel can lodge in the mud. Little Dog’s need to keep restarting his letter again speaks to the importance of his message.

She is however perpetually plagued by flashbacks to the traumas she saw and suffered during the war. Vuong, who was born on a rice farm outside Saigon in 1988 and emigrated to Hartford in 1990, received the T.S. According to British records, over 60,000 eligible soldiers fled the United States in total during Vietnam to avoid fighting in the war. His reference to Toni Morrison’s. "[15], Dwight Garner of The New York Times gave the novel a mixed review, writing, "Vuong's writing about nail salons, and the way mothers raised their children in them, is moving and rarely less than excellent. Trevor’s insistence that Little Dog doesn’t cry “again” implies that Little Dog has cried before. Rose grew up during the Vietnam War. My students love how organized the handouts are and enjoy tracking the themes as a class.”, LitCharts uses cookies to personalize our services. There is always the risk of heartache, but the beauty is worth it. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous should seal his literary stature. Again, Little Dog’s memories seem completely random and unrelated. At school, the kids called him “freak, fairy, fag,” and those words, Little Dog points out, are also iterations of a kind of monstrosity. The narrator’s name is Little Dog, though he has many others. It is revealed here that he has another wife, but he still keeps his and Lan’s wedding picture framed on his living room wall. “What’s good” has a unique meaning in Hartford, and this meaning does not translate to anywhere else. Once. The buffalo following their families over the sides of cliffs to certain death serves as a metaphor for the cyclical nature of drug addiction within families. Both Lan and Rose are traumatized by the war. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter written by a man called Little Dog to his mother named Rose. [1] An epistolary novel, it is written in the form of a letter from a Vietnamese American son to his illiterate mother. Rose, who had been tormented in Vietnam for being light-skinned, which was proof of her mother’s treacherous dalliance with the enemy, is able to “pass” for white in America. Trevor was robbed of his dreams—to go to college and be a physical therapist—largely because of the inappropriate prescribing of OxyContin. Little Dog goes home instead, and it is after midnight when Little Dog opens the door to his mother’s room. Like the buffalo, Kyle metaphorically follows Kevin off the cliff. Over time their conversations and hangouts grow increasingly intimate. "[16], The book was named one of the top ten books of 2019 by the Washington Post. help you understand the book. An Amazon Best Book of June 2019:There is an immediacy to On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous that almost feels unique. Vuong's language soars as he writes of beauty, survival, and freedom, which sometimes isn't freedom at all, but "simply the cage widening far away from you, the bars abstracted with distance but still there," like animals in nature preserves. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. [19], "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong", "The Beauty of Men: Ocean Vuong's "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, "Ocean Vuong Explores the Coming-of-Age of Queerness", "Survival as a Creative Force: An Interview with Ocean Vuong", "A poetic American novel of queer first love and family brutality", "Ocean Vuong's 'On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous' is permanently stunning", "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous Is a Daring Tale of Queer Love and Pain", "Ocean Vuong's 'On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous' animates the visceral beauty of youth", https://www.penfaulkner.org/2020/05/04/our-video-celebration-of-the-2020-pen-faulkner-award/, https://www.nationalbook.org/2019-national-book-awards-longlist-for-fiction/, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=On_Earth_We%27re_Briefly_Gorgeous&oldid=956869370, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 15 May 2020, at 19:22. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Ocean Vuong said that his novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous was about "the failure of the American Dream," which was one of several types of failure in the... "Our mother tongue, then, is no mother at all—but an orphan." 7:06. Part 3 .

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is more about processing and articulating difficult memories than about direct communication. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous Part 3 Summary & Analysis | LitCharts. But language ... gets you deeper.". In On Earth we’re Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong explores the lasting effects of the Vietnam War on his family.He specifically mentions the Tet Offensive, a North Vietnamese attack on South Vietnam in 1968. A needle exchange is a program in which addicts can safely exchange dirty needles for clean ones, therefore reducing the transmission of blood borne diseases, and it is evidence that Trevor is indeed an addict. He tells Little Dog that it may be best for him not to be called Grandpa anymore. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous should seal his literary stature. The original text plus a side-by-side modern translation of. As a young boy, the narrator grows up with Rose and his grandmother Lan in a tiny Hartford apartment.

It is impossible for Little Dog to talk about Trevor without talking about OxyContin and cocaine. Little Dog repeatedly mentions a table he remembers from his childhood, and that table is intimately linked with his memories of his father, of which Little Dog has very few. Little Dog’s comment that he went to say goodbye to Trevor in a “way men are supposed to do” implies that men are not supposed to show their feelings and emotions, and to do so is to not behave as a “real” man. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous Ocean Vuong. She suffers from posttraumatic stress disorder as a result. Their relationship is intense but it does not last long because Trevor struggles with internalized homophobia. Little Dog’s claim that he is “at war” implies that the discrimination he faces as an immigrant in the current political climate is just as traumatic as Rose’s experience in actual war. The child is Little Dog's mother, Rose. Mother tongue refers to a person's first language or the language they have grown up with. His grandmother named herself and her second daughter, Little Dog’s mother, after flowers. She is barely literate, having left school at the age of five when her schoolhouse in Vietnam collapsed during an American napalm raid. Little Dog sees the world differently than others, as evidenced by his multicolored cow, and he has been scolded and punished for these differences for most of his life. But so am I, which is why I can't turn away from you. A large part of Little Dog dies with Lan, which is why this memory is included in his letter. Xavier and Little Dog’s four other friends who are dead because of drugs, either directly or indirectly, further underscores the ubiquity of drug use in America. The 20 books to read this summer But the story he tells in “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous… Witnessing both Rose and Lan's difficulties conversing in English, the narrator eventually adopts the role of family interpreter, swearing never to leave them without words. As Little Dog attempts to tell, or rather show, Rose what it means to be a writer, the structure of his letter again reads like stream of consciousness, and his thoughts become random and seemingly disconnected, much like memory can be. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. Rose marries an abusive man but eventually separates from him. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous study guide contains a biography of Ocean Vuong, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. Penguin Random House LLC, 2019. "[12], Ron Charles of The Washington Post praised the novel, calling it "permanently stunning". The people on the stage are men extravagantly dressed as women, and they are singing and dancing and entertaining the crowd. Trevor was exceedingly important to Little Dog, thus he can never be truly forgotten. Not everything that came from the war is bad.