Reading Circle 69: ‚On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous‘ by Ocean Vuong

The author, Ocean Vuong, is a Vietnamese American poet, essayist and novelist. He was born in Ho Chi Min City, but left Vietnam when he was only two years old. His grandfather was a white American GI and it was to the United States that Vuong’s family fled when they were at risk in Vietnam because of their mixed heritage. He is now a professor at Amherst, Massachussets, writer in residence at New York University, and a practicing Zen Buddhist.  He has won a number of writing prizes, including the 2017 T.S Eliot Prize for his poetry. This is his first novel.

The description on the back of the book says of the novel:
This 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. It tells of Vietnam, of the lasting impact of war, and of his family’s struggle to forge a new future. And it serves as a doorway into parts of Little Dog’s life his mother has never known – episodes of bewilderment, fear and passion – all the while moving closer to an unforgettable revelation.

This semi-autobiographical novel is dedicated to Voung’s mother, who died just as it was being published.
Music played.  Excerpts from:
Nocturne in B flat minor, Op.9, No.1 by Fredick Chopin
Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber, used in the soundtrack from the film Platoon, about the Vietnam War.

Recommendations of books from Reading Circle members.

• Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson: perhaps the quintessential distillation of English country life at the turn of the 20th century.
• Bleak House by Charles Dickens: Dickens’ satirical view of the British judicial system and the corruption at the heart of Victorian society.
• Jackdaws by Ken Follett: a World War two thriller about a group of female British agents on a mission in France just before D-Day.
• The Vegetarian by Han Kang: about a South Korean female trying to find her own way and return to nature.
• Tom Lake by Ann Patchett: about the secret lives of parents and how to find happiness in the midst of a long life.
• The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott: the exciting story of the women in the CIA’s typing pool and how their story intertwined with the fate of Boris Pasternak’s banned novel Doctor Zhivago.