Ocean Vuong’s remarkably elegant debut novel, “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous,” is a poetic letter to a mother who cannot read. Following the biographical story of Vuong’s life, the novel gracefully jumps between the past and present, evoking incredible questions about contemporary American society.

Flashing through three generations of Vietnamese people, Vuong weaves stories of survival from both the Vietnam War and American immigration into a seamless narrative, collapsing time and making his grandmother’s story just as relevant as his own. The multigenerational experience of Vuong’s family is taken into account with each word, making each character reverberate across time.

The protagonist, Little Dog, is a young man tormented by his classmates, his mentally ill mother and his own inner monologue. As readers watch Little Dog grow from the quiet son of a nail salon owner into an emboldened young poet and visionary, they encounter his trauma with striking precision.

Such trauma is not an isolated incident felt by Little Dog but a multigenerational series of compounded abuse and discrimination by the society Vuong and his family inhabit. The vision of himself that Little Dog develops in his childhood begins to clash with his American and Vietnamese identity, creating an isolated, vulnerable narrative that makes each word a difficult step in an inevitable struggle.

Engrossing and poignantly sad, Vuong’s novel reads like poetry without high-brow language or overly complicated structure. At its core, “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” is just that: anchored to the Earth on which we live, brief and profoundly gorgeous.

The book itself is bound by both life and death, whose presence and sudden imposition into the narrative have a life-like feeling that makes readers mourn alongside Little Dog. Vuong’s prose is a reminder of how vulnerability is painful but necessary. Each word carries the weight of his and his family’s experiences, elevating the novel from a compelling story into something reminiscent of an epic poem.

Although the novel is short, its impact on readers is tremendous. Winner of a MacArthur Genius Grant in 2019, Vuong has created a new and daring lane for himself in contemporary literature.

Although 2019 was a profoundly successful year for the young writer, it was also full of great loss. In October, the woman at the core of Vuong’s writing, his mother, passed away from stage four breast cancer.

Since the book’s release, Vuong’s work has been translated into over 30 languages. You can pick up a copy of “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” at your local bookstore.