On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

Resumen del libro

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 and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation.

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, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.

With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are.

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.

Biografía del autor

Nacido en Saigon (Vietnam), el poeta y editor Ocean Vuong creció en Hartford, Connecticut. Como persona que tuvo que emigrar a los dos años de edad y como defensor de los derechos LGTB, sus poemas constituyen un profundo acercamiento a temas como el deseo, la pérdida y la transformación. Ha obtenido las becas de la Fundación Saltonsatil para las artes y la beca Ruth y Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg y ha recibido, entre otros, los siguientes galardones: Premio de la Academia de poetas Americas, Premio Stanley Kunitz de Poesía Joven, el Premio Pushcart y el Premio Whiting.