I’m gonna say right away, I have a hard time talking about this book. More than anything, I had a hard time pinning it down and trying to figure out my own feelings towards it.
So much so, until I really sat down and confronted myself on what it’s even about – that even though it’s not that complicated, I couldn’t have even told you that much. It’s an overwhelming work that’s struck me dumb – and I’ve created for myself a problem in forcing myself to talk about it honestly.
A few years ago I’d decided to participate in NaNoWriMo, but at the same time, happened to be reading Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale, which I found her use of language and idea so much more vastly brilliant, I found myself “tongue-tied,” discouraged, and pathetic. I lost my enthusiasm for my own story because I knew I could never compete. Yes, I knew then, and now, that that’s silly. Atwood is probably one of the greatest writers of the era, and it should have nothing to do with what I had to say – I know as well as anyone else that creativity isn’t a competition. But, as they say, it was too hard an act to follow – even if the stage was all in my head.
Ocean Vuong is like that: I’m humbled and inadequate before someone who’s use of his second language is so beautiful, I can’t even summon the words for it in my first language.
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is quite literally, a letter to the author’s mother. Or rather, his matriarchs. It is “autofiction,” which I’d never knew had a name until now (auto-biography wrapped up in fiction). The layout – and reason, I guess, why this book baffled me so much is because it is written like a bunch of memories that pour out from you. It’s not linear. If anything, it’s circular.
Little Dog, as he is called, describes his life as a poor Vietnamese immigrant growing up in nail salons where his illiterate Mother works, being raised by his grandmother who suffers from dementia and schizophrenia, and falling in love with the broken grandson of the tobacco farmer he spent his Summers working for.
This novel is told in Kishotenketsu, which is ultimately a means to say – there is no conflict, heroes, or villains. At least, not in the traditionally Western sense. Poverty, madness, homosexuality – desperation – are textures to the story. No one is really to blame, though the grudge is with Mother Rose, who will never read this book even though it is intended for her. As a matter of fact, a friend sent me an article written about the book and it’s author printed shortly before the book was published. In it, we find out that Ocean Vuong’s mother had recently been diagnosed with cancer. The timing, the closure – if that is the correct word for it – is almost a prank from God, though having worked her life in a nail salon inhaling toxic fumes, it was always inevitable.
This book is obviously brilliant, but I admit to my own short-comings as a reader who is a Caucasian woman living in America. I know that it resonates the most with other readers who have had a similar background as it’s author. As such, it is a very important, diamond of a book. More so, as it exposes poverty in an intimate way that will jar many of it’s readers.
lala poopsie books 