On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong

This book is a work of absolute emotion.

I bought this book at the beginning of quarantine and it had been sitting on my shelf, waiting for the day I was ready to read it. And one day, I whipped it off the shelf with absolute certainty that the day had come.

I read this book quickly – well, quickly for me, that is. Within a week, which is a feat for me considering it is nonfiction. But the way this book is written is…well, it’s like watching water fall. There is no way to really describe it, but I’ll try my best. Vuong is writing a letter to his mother – he states this clearly. He also tells us she cannot read. The way the book begins is in the middle. He brings you in on what you feel is his fifth, tenth, thirtieth attempt at writing to the woman who carried him. That in and of itself was slightly jarring, but I loved it. He does not waste time. He brings you in to the fold.

I felt, as I read this, the enormity of what we do not know about a person. We meet strangers every day, and we only get the most surface level glance into their person, but it is simply the ice burg theory. We see what is above the water, but not what is anchoring them beneath it. Vuong lets us see the anchor, the history, the person. I very much appreciated the way he brings the backstory of his grandmother and mother in to our eyes in a way that is natural – he is carrying on a conversation with us. One sided, yes, but still there. He is telling us the story of their lives.

He takes us on the journey of his budding sexuality, which is an extremely vulnerable place to allow strangers. We watch as he meets his best friend, his partner, and we are along for the ride. His relationship with Trevor is particularly moving to me, simply because they managed to find each other. And how?

When I was younger, I used to believe that every person had an invisible shining thread coming out the top of their head, and somewhere else in the world the other end of that thread was attached to their person, who they’d end up with. In my youthful eyes, there was no wiggle room, there was no exception; your thread tied you to that person who anchored you to the planet. I was reminded of this analogy as I read the story of Little Dog and Trevor, not particularly because Trevor was the knot at the end of Little Dog’s string, but because perhaps he wasn’t. The imagery I carried as a child was immature simply due to the fact that I had had no experiences. I did not recognize that there cannot be a single thread, because that is not fair to the individual – how can we find our person without the act of looking for them?

Trevor and Little Dog fell into step and experienced things together that opened their eyes to an entirely new reality, and I felt the tension and the awkwardness and the uncertainty of the unknown. It is like Vuong opened his book and put his finger to the page and said, “This is where those feelings come from.”

The thing is…is that this is considered a son’s letter to his mother. The more I think about it though, the more I believe this letter was written to himself. What is the best way to relieve yourself of the weight of your past? Is it to write it down? For myself, I think it would be. Maybe Vuong felt the same. Regardless of his reasons for writing the letter-that-is-also-a-memoir, I am grateful that he did. The book is full of beautiful words strung into beautiful sentences, his poet’s brain benefitting the eyes of his readers. If you are a fan of lyrical and moving prose, read this. If you need to reminded of what you are grateful for, read this. If you want something that will shoot you into the sky and have you reflecting on your own history, read this.

Anyway, lovelies…go read something wonderful.

Xoxo

Is.