How a descendent of peasants and prostitutes became a poet
An acclaimed poet’s debut novel is a virtuosic gem
According to Soren Kierkegaard, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” In Ocean Vuong’s debut novel, “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous,” we are treated to such an understanding in the extraordinarily capable hands of a rather amazing virtuoso.
Ocean Vuong took the poetry world by storm in 2016. His first and only collection of poems, “Night Sky With Exit Wounds,” won both the T. S. Eliot Prize and Whiting Award. That would be an amazing accomplishment for any debut poet, but for it to come from a 28-year-old Vietnamese immigrant who could barely read until he was 16, written in an adopted language as a college undergrad, borders on the preposterous.
Consider that until he received the advance for his novel, Mr. Vuong was cleaning toilets at Panera Bread for $8 an hour. In a recent interview with Kevin Nguyen of The New York Times, Vuong admits that when he is asked about his next poetry collection, he responds, “For what? There’s nothing left.”
While I rest assured that this now 30-year-old bard will find plenty of material to mine as he lives his life forward, it is this moving and intimate look backward that has created a novel both unique and endearing.
Vuong writes what he knows. It is the story of Little Dog, a young, gay immigrant poet from Vietnam who was raised by a single mother and grandmother — just like Vuong. Little Dog is writing for an audience of one, in the form of letters to his illiterate mother. What better way to explore all your deepest secrets, humiliations and insecurities than in correspondence to a safe and beloved figure who will never read it?
Their lives are sparse and difficult, but they are not to be pitied. Theirs is simply a life lived, and they are grateful in knowing that many others like them were not afforded such a gift. Everything they do is to survive. They are not defined by the memories of what happened to them, even if all that has happened to them has made them who they are.
Little Dog is the name given to him by Lan, his manic grandmother. “What made a woman who named herself and her daughter after flowers call her grandson a dog? A woman who watches out for her own, that’s who …. To love something … is to name it after something so worthless it might be left untouched — and alive.” Survivors.
Lan plays a starring role as the feral presence of the family roots. A sex worker during the war who gave birth to a daughter fathered by an anonymous G.I., her role as part psychotic PTSD maniac and part protective “big sister” to Little Dog is the glue that bonds this family.
If I had any complaint, it would be that Little Dog’s mother, Rose, is rather flat and colorless in the retelling. Her only modes seem to be hard work, exhaustion and physical abuse of her son. But that is the tradeoff for immigration. You flee one type of slavery only to volunteer for slavery to long hours of underpaid, body-mangling labor in the unsafe conditions of a nail salon. Engaging personality traits and deep, meaningful conversation are luxuries afforded to other people.
To call this a story is a bit of a stretch. There is no plot, no protagonist or antagonist, and no conflictdriven three-act structure to grasp the hero’s prize. That is not to say that nothing happens. There is life and death, hateful adversity, sexual discovery, and the heartbreaking realities of living in a town besieged by opioid addiction.
But what keeps the pages turning are the honest moments indelibly burned into the memory. Dinner of jasmine tea over rice (“true peasant food”) with your grandmother. Caring for your mother’s broken body after work because that is a son’s job. The awkward naivete of forbidden first love.
When I began the book, I wondered if I would be able to relate to the tale of a gay Vietnamese immigrant. But within a few pages, it became clear that the story of family and of discovering yourself as you come of age, is universal. It is a story that has been played out over and over by German steelworkers, Mexican migrant farm workers, Irish high-rise beam-walkers, and Iranian bellhops.
This immigrant’s life is as deeply an American story as George Washington’s truth-telling or Benjamin Franklin’s kite, but this one is much more expertly told.