On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong Discussion

Hey guys welcome back to my channel so in this video I'm going to talk about Earth we are

briefly

beautiful a novel by Ocean Vong so Ocean Vong is a really amazing poet he has a collection of poetry and then he wrote this. novel with a very poetic tendency, so the protagonist of the book is a boy called little dog, which is the nickname his grandmother gave him and how he refers to him throughout the book and in the book the little dog is writing a letter to his mother and you. knows how to tell the story of his childhood from his own perspective, so the little dog and his family are immigrants from Vietnam, so he came to the United States when he was two years old and lives there with his grandmother and his mother, so his grandmother and his mother lived in Vietnam during the Vietnam War and I saw horrible things while they were there and even after the war ended the country had a lot of problems as a result of the war and the year they left I think in the book said it was 13 years later. the war was over, but the country was still very damaged at that time, so they ended up in Hartford and we saw the little dogs growing up there and xenophobia problems, language barrier problems and poverty, and I think we also see a lot of love for Hartford and the various people there just in the descriptions and then what makes up the last part of this book is the little dog's relationship with Trevor, who is his first love, so a question I certainly had when I started this.

The book is how much of this is fact or fiction. Clearly, Ocean Vog is drawing a lot of inspiration from his own life and his own family history, so I looked this up and found in an interview with Ocean Vong talking about this, how much of what happens in this book starts with his own real experiences. , but it doesn't always end that way. He takes the story where it's going, whether it's true to his own life or not, and that's why it's considered a novel, but only a novel that's heavily inspired by his own experiences and he also points out that I really think it's the The way a poet thinks about what the truth is, that you're trying to get at a greater truth rather than a literal truth, so as I think about the

ocean

Vong is certainly writing about things he knows.

I wouldn't take this as a memoir because we don't really know where those lines are, just as in poetry often the voice is very similar to that of the writer, but the speaker in a poem is not. necessarily equivalent, which is why there is a lot of

discussion

in this book about people themselves being products of violence; They wouldn't be in the United States if the Vietnam War hadn't happened. The little dog wouldn't even exist if the war hadn't happened, so his Grandma Lon left a marriage in Vietnam and, being a little unattainable at the time, had to become a sex worker to survive, so his mother the little dog, who often goes by Rosa in this book or is called Rosa, is the daughter of an American soldier, so war in general is the only way she exists and you know, Ocean von draws a parallel between that and Tiger Woods and how he is also a product of the Vietnam War if you look at his family and ethnic history. background, so all of this violence is an inherent part of his story, and even though the little dog was only two years old when he left Vietnam, he is inheriting a lot of this trauma, and very early in the book this metaphor about monarch butterflies is introduced.

And you know, obviously they migrate, so it's not a huge leap to make the immigration connection, but really I think what it boils down to is that monarch butterflies leave home, but that same generation is not coming back, they are their children. those who will return. So a monarch who flies south will not live long enough to make the return trip and that seems to me to connect well with the story of her grandmother Lon and that Vietnam is her home, she has to leave it and she never gets to it. . going back is like at the beginning of the video to talk about something that happens at the end but we see Lon die at the end of the book and the last thing she asks for is to eat some rice from the district where she is from. in Vietnam, so his life ends in this kind of foreign place and, I mean, the metaphor is very moving, it's a very sad scene, of course, but the point is made again and again in this book and it's something that I have tried to explain.

What I explore in my own writing and in my own worldview is that these characters are not just their trauma, they are not just this darkness and violence that is in their past, such a little dog in their thoughts at the end of the book that is really rejecting the idea that they are products of violence, but there are products of beauty and the beauty of surviving those things and coming out relatively unscathed, so we see so much talk about beauty in this book. I mean, you know the title, obviously it's going to come up and there's a lot about the appreciation of beauty and these kind of little moments of joy throughout the book, like in an early example, we see that the names are a reflection of this.

Lon names herself and her name means orchid and she calls her daughter her rose. Usually in this book she is called rose, but her real name is the Vietnamese word for rose, which I think was hong, so they are both given these beautiful floral names and were chosen specifically. Lon was looking for beauty in her difficult life and then we also see the It should be noted that they don't have the language for many of the beautiful things they see, at least they don't have the English language for it, but they can still appreciate it. You know, you don't need to have a special education to do it. feel beauty and have that depth within you, which sounds obvious when you say it, but I think when we see things in movies and television of people reduced to stereotypes, we take away people's ability to appreciate things like that, as if there was a scene. about hummingbirds like they don't even know the word hummingbird and at that age I don't think the little dog doesn't know it either, but they know it's beautiful and they know they want hummingbirds to come to their garden too and there's something similar. thing with flowers like a little dog and his grandmother they like to steal flowers on the side of a road just because they are beautiful and they don't need the name they know it's beautiful so it's not just a trauma, it's not just difficulties, they like everyone to look for the beauty and little moments of joy in their lives and that's one of the most important things about this book is that balance where even if you have a difficult life, that's not all you are, you can't just be reduced to that. that and that happiness and sadness often exist side by side and there is so much love in this book, you know, in the protagonists and the little dog, he feels a lot of love for his mother, his grandmother and Trevor, once that we know Trevor and that.

Love coincides with abuse and challenges throughout the entire book, so something that is very important and that comes up a lot in this book is the role of language and the language barrier that the family members of the small dogs experiment when they are in Hartford, so their mother Rose knows this all too well. little English and she also doesn't seem to know how to read and write, her education in Vietnam was interrupted due to the war, so she can't read, which is very significant for the little dog because as he grows up he eventually becomes a writer and we see scenes in which she has trouble communicating with English speakers and there's a lot of kind of xenophobia and hatred that she feels because of that, there's an interesting moment where it's talking about how they go to a store and they get up, you know her father was a man white American, she almost passes for a white woman at first, but then when she has to talk, that goes away and it's clearly something that is very painful for her and that she feels a lot of shame about.

You can see from the beginning that the little dog wants to learn English and be a translator and it sort of protects his mother from having to feel that kind of shame and the language really speaks to the act of writing this book. Remember that it is written as a letter to his mother, but you know that the essential irony is that his mother will not be able to read it, I think we will see as the book progresses that there are many things that are not said between the little dog and his mother and this is one way of saying it and then towards the end of the book there is this kind of beautiful, heartbreaking moment where the little dog is saying his last wish for his mother and that he hopes that when she dies and is reincarnated she will be a little girl in a house full of books and that maybe one day that girl will do it. read this book that the little dog is writing you will find this letter and you will remember it so there is a lot about language in this book and reflect on how language affects how we think and how we see things too so now let's start talking about trevor then Trevor is a very American boy that the little dog meets while working summers on a tobacco farm and Trevor ends up being his first love and there are so many beautiful little scenes and moments with them where you can see them fall in love with each other and they like to find each other. some comfort in that and you know it talks about how the little dog learns to live more fully when he's with Trevor, so it's all very sweet and I think from the beginning we immerse ourselves in Trevor's charm and understand what the little dog sees into him very quickly because the story gives us all those happy moments first, but we also see that Trevor, you know, an American boy was obviously raised with very traditional ideas about masculinity, which obviously causes some internalized shame and conflict with him. he has a gay relationship with a little dog and then as the book goes on we see more and more pieces of this tragic and very dark part of Trevor's life where he is an addict, so we finally find out that due to an injury when I was 15 years old.

I think he was prescribed opioids and he became addicted to them and that addiction led to the use of many different drugs and really the whole time the little dog knows that Trevor is struggling with this and then at the end of the book, Trevor dies of an overdose and He's only 22, so the opioid crisis is something else this book is taking a close look at. You know, several people that the little dog knows in this community are mentioned who have overdosed and I think it's anyone from a rural community or you. I know a less affluent community in America knows how widespread this issue is, so I refer to a lot of those scenes and the way the writer approaches them really hits close to home, so a topic that comes up a lot in this book is traditional masculinity, obviously.

Trevor comes up with a lot, there's a lot of

discussion

about assigning traditional gender roles to doggie and Trevor and that somehow makes Trevor feel more comfortable, and then there's a lot of talk about people trying to toughen up doggy and not doggie. being enough of a man, there's this whole scene where a little dog gets a pink bike as a kid and you just know which one his mom could afford and then he gets bullied for it, but the little dog even after that loves his bike pink, you know he doesn't want to be attacked, he doesn't want to draw attention to himself, but privately he likes his pink bike and doesn't really care that it's pink, so we see a lot of things like the little dog just being who he is, bumping into people.

American values ​​of masculinity, so I want to talk a little bit about how trauma manifests itself in the lives of the characters in this book. You know, the trauma of war and the trauma of being Abused and how that affects the way they act in their everyday lives, so both Lon and Rose had really difficult experiences when they were in Vietnam. They carry a lot of trauma from that, the civilians in Vietnam suffered a lot and saw a lot of death and loss, so both Lawn and Rose throughout the book have these mental health issues and they have these symptoms of PTSD and that generates many of the truly heartbreaking scenes in this book.

You know, there's a part about the fireworks and that triggers something in the line and sends it into this kind of survival mode and there's a whole scene where the little dog's mother, Rose, is convinced that she has to go save her sister from her abusive husband, but in reality she is kind of coming back to life. Something that happened years ago, we're looking at this through the lens of a little boy that I think he feels like he wants to take care of them. Remember that there is all this love in the story, but there is also a lot of darkness.

At the beginning of the book it is established that the little dog loves his mother and they have all these beautiful little moments together, but those moments are directly contrasted with these moments of abuse. You know, Rose herself was abused by the little dog's father and we see a whole list of cases where she hit the little dog, but obviously nothing is so simple that the little dog can only feel one thing for her mother, so we really see how they are living and how they cope with all this, which is survival. Not only does it exist, but just existing is a challenge, I mean, they really are fighting every day and I think this trauma that sometimes causes Rose to shut down is another one of those little barriers between the little dog and his mother. . that the act of writing this book is like trying to break through, so the little dog obviously sees all the pain in her mother and wants to protect her from many things.

You know, there seems to be a lot left about Trevor in particular. unspoken between him and his mother, he doesn't want to make her life more difficult, sothat the little dog that talks through this letter through this book is him, you know, finally telling this whole story. beautiful and sad at the same time, so I really want to highlight the way this book is written, the style in which it is written because it really is a poet's novel and I love to see poets writing outside the genre and writing things in prose because I think I tend to bring something really unique and something that appeals to me and my taste as a reader, so there are many poetic elements in the way it is written.

You know, we're seeing a lot of vignettes in this book, little short scenes and you get the glimpse that things aren't necessarily in chronological order, it tends to break a lot of the rules that you would expect from a novel. We also see these metaphors created and developed throughout the book, like the monarch butterflies, for example, and the way those metaphors are introduced and developed and explored I find very poetic and even in the structure there are some parts of this book that They seem to me very explicitly like a prose poem, like if you look at this section that adopts a list structure in which it talks about kind of different characteristics of Trevor and giving us some background, you know that the structure doesn't look like traditional prose, it's a bit of genre, you know there's no need for complete sentences or following rules like that, which is a lot more like poetry than prose, and I mean. it's just that the language is so rich and beautiful and filled with all these great images, so clearly, a lot of those poetic skills that Ocean Vog has, you know, tons of him being an incredible poet, all of that is finding its way. this novel I think leads to a really unique voice and something that is really attractive and beautiful.

I mean, there's so much love for language and love for language is explicitly talked about, but it's also so obvious in every word choice and every sentence that the writer loves this medium that he's working with, so yeah, There's a lot of trauma in this book, there's a lot of difficult and sad things that these characters deal with, but there's so much more to the story than that, I mean, there's so much more. love and there is beauty I mean just the title itself really reflects this and that makes the moments you meet even more poignant and moving as a reader I mean the last 50 pages or so were so emotionally resonant and it wasn't just because it was sad without any payoff, really complicated human emotions are depicted here and it feels so natural.

I'll read this one, which is one of the quotes I wrote about a little dog's own thoughts on this topic. Do you remember the happiest? day of your life, what about the saddest day? Have you ever wondered if sadness and happiness can combine to create a deep purple feeling? It is not good, it is not bad, but it is extraordinary, simply because you did not have to live on one side or the other, which really is one. One of the central themes of this book is that you don't have to live on one side or the other and I think about that and you know, taking into account this past with his family and dealing with the loss of Trevor, the love and the loss of Trevor .

I think the little dog really gains this appreciation for just living, so I want to read one more thing on that note before I end the video. I want to insist that our being alive is beautiful enough to be worthy of replication and so what? What if everything I ever did with my life was more? In many ways, this book becomes a celebration of life and survival. I think we should note that the last line of this book ends with a laugh, so I mean, I already knew that. I thought I was going to love this book, but it was so much more than I expected.

It's so beautifully written, it's so moving, it's a great story, it's amazing in form and content. I mean, it comes with a huge recommendation from me. It's an incredible book. I misread Ocean's poetry collection before. I hope to visit him again soon and make a video about him because, I mean, he's such a talented person. It's completely mind-blowing how he can use language and everything. It turns out so beautiful and surprising and anyway it feels like such a fresh voice in poetry right now, so my next video will be about some poetry, the day is gone, by Rose McClarney and yeah, that's all I I have for this video, thanks for watching, bye.