On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is the debut novel by Vietnamese American poet Ocean Vuong (born 1988), published by Penguin Press on June 4, 2019. It takes the form of a letter from a young Vietnamese American, nicknamed Little Dog, to his mother, Rose, who is barely literate. The narrator's life closely mirrors that of the author, and the letter unfolds in a nonlinear structure that moves back and forth across time and between voices.

The novel is not confined to the bond between mother and son. It also recounts the life of the grandmother, Lan, who fled an arranged marriage during the Vietnam War and became a prostitute. She later married a white American soldier, and they had Rose, though her biological father was probably another man. Rose left school at five, when her schoolhouse in Vietnam was destroyed in an American napalm raid, and she suffers from posttraumatic stress disorder. After an abusive marriage, she works in a nail salon in Hartford, Connecticut, as a single mother living with her son and her own mother, three refugees who can barely speak English. Little Dog, who is gay, is abused by his mother throughout his childhood. Halfway through the book he meets Trevor, a young white man, during a summer spent working on a tobacco farm; the two form a romantic relationship. Trevor becomes addicted to opioids and later dies of an overdose.

The book has been read as a blend of memoir, bildungsroman and book-length poem. Its underlying conviction is that stories and language are necessary for survival, and that the intimate and the physical can be turned into something political.

The novel was generally very well received. Kirkus Reviews called it an uncategorizable hybrid, and Ron Charles of The Washington Post described it as "permanently stunning". Viet Thanh Nguyen, writing in Time, praised its refusal to be embarrassed. Dwight Garner of The New York Times was more reserved, pointing to forced catharses and overwrought lyricism, though he admired the passages set in nail salons. It was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction and spent six weeks on The New York Times fiction bestseller list. A film adaptation announced by A24 remains in development.