William Lee Adams is joined by Ocean Vuong to discuss his acclaimed novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous — a luminous and unflinching exploration of family, identity, memory and the complexities of love.
The story unfolds as a letter from Little Dog, a young Vietnamese American man, to his mother, Rose, who is unable to read. Through this intimate act of storytelling, he traces his childhood in Hartford, Connecticut, the inherited trauma of his family’s experiences of war and migration, and the complicated bond between mother and son. As Little Dog reflects on his coming of age, his first love with a boy named Trevor, and the tenderness and brutality that can coexist in human relationships, he searches for a language capable of expressing what his family has struggled to articulate.
Moving between personal memory and collective history, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous examines the lasting effects of war, the experience of being an outsider, the challenges of growing up queer, and the ways violence and love can become entangled across generations. With its striking imagery, poetic prose and profound emotional honesty, the novel asks what it means to tell our own stories when the people we love may never be able to hear them.
Ocean Vuong will be answering questions from our global audience of book lovers. Why craft the novel as a letter to an illiterate recipient? How does he approach the craft of poetry and prose? And are working class authors under threat in contemporary literature?