On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous — A Novel by Ocean Vuong
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born, a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, masculinity, and our current American moment—immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma but undergirded by compassion and tenderness. The question of how to survive and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born, a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, masculinity, and our current American moment—immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma but undergirded by compassion and tenderness. The question of how to survive and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born, a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, masculinity, and our current American moment—immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma but undergirded by compassion and tenderness. The question of how to survive and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ocean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds and the New York Times bestselling novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. A recipient of the 2019 MacArthur "Genius" Grant, he is also the winner of the Whiting Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize. His writings have been featured in The Atlantic, Harper's Magazine, The Nation, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.
