Ocean Vuong

Having finished reading this novel, On Earth we're briefly gorgeous, one looks back at its poetic title and wonders what it means. Like the words and the story elements in the novel it seems the five words that make up the title are each beautiful, and they are seemingly connected; they seemingly suggest an ideal state that we might long for, but more likely these five words are disconnected, they are simply suspended in the air.

Reading On Earth we're briefly gorgeous, you also have to recall the time frame of the Vietnam War. Since it took place before I was born, and ended during my early youth, nonetheless, the images of the boat refugees is clearly in my mind. Significant dates and the start of the conflict as early as 1955, the end of American involvement in 1973 and the fall of Saigon in 1975, and the subsequent migration crisis of the Vietnamese boat people from its height in the late 1970s till the beginning of the 1990s. In as far as On Earth we're briefly gorgeous autobiographical, that means that the flight it set in that final decade of the late 1980s.

Much of the story is quite horrible. Little Dog, as the main character is dubbed, has made a narrow escape, but misery follows his. The history of his grandmother, the troubles of his mother which also beset Little Dog in the new land, as he often needs to solve their problem follow him wherever he goes. In fact, the misery left behind in Vietnam is only replaced by different misery in the new land. A brief moment of bliss and love is foreshortened by his lover's death from drug abuse.

Little Dog is in the centre of all this misery. Still, all is dressed in the most beauteous, poetic language. Beauty, in the form of language: poetry, beautiful language surrounds him. It is where he turns to find relief. None in his family could read, but from the age of 11 Little Dog manages to read. Writing becomes the way to deal with his life's misery. The book, though not in linear chronological order, is a letter, written to his mother.… (mehr)