On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous: A Novel

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous: A Novel
ISBN-10
0525562044
ISBN-13
9780525562047
Series
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
Category
Fiction
Pages
256
Language
English
Published
2021-06-01
Publisher
Penguin
Author
Ocean Vuong

Description

An instant New York Times Bestseller! Longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction, the Carnegie Medal in Fiction, the 2019 Aspen Words Literacy Prize, and the PEN/Hemingway Debut Novel Award Shortlisted for the 2019 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize Winner of the 2019 New England Book Award for Fiction! Named one of the most anticipated books of 2019 by Vulture, Entertainment Weekly, Buzzfeed, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Oprah.com, Huffington Post, The A.V. Club, Nylon, The Week, The Rumpus, The Millions, The Guardian, Publishers Weekly, and more. “A lyrical work of self-discovery that’s shockingly intimate and insistently universal…Not so much briefly gorgeous as permanently stunning.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post Poet Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling 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. Named a Best Book of the Year by: GQ, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Library Journal, TIME, Esquire, The Washington Post, Apple, Good Housekeeping, The New Yorker, The New York Public Library, Elle.com, The Guardian, The A.V. Club, NPR, Lithub, Entertainment Weekly, Vogue.com, The San Francisco Chronicle, Mother Jones, Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal Magazine and more!

Other editions

Similar books

  • Night Sky with Exit Wounds
    By Ocean Vuong

    This book is a masterpiece that captures, with elegance, the raw sorrows and joys of human existence."—Buzzfeed's "Most Exciting New Books of 2016" "This original, sprightly wordsmith of tumbling pulsing phrases pushes poetry to a new ...

  • Time Is a Mother
    By Ocean Vuong

    The highly anticipated collection of poems from the award-winning writer Ocean Vuong How else do we return to ourselves but to fold The page so it points to the good part In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong ...

  • The Illness Lesson: A Novel
    By Clare Beams

    A patch of cloth , brown , with a pattern faded past deciphering . She reached within and pulled the cloth from under , over , in between the twigs , rolled her fingers across it , and was filled with the memory of a dress she'd had at ...

  • Burnings
    By Ocean Vuong

    The poetry explore refugee culture, be the speaker a literal refugee from a torn homeland, or a refugee from his own skin, burning with the heat of awakening eroticism. In this world, we're all refugees from something.

  • Mourning Diary
    By Roland Barthes

    A major discovery: The lost diary of a great mind—and an intimate, deeply moving study of grief The day after his mother's death in October 1977, the influential philosopher Roland Barthes began a diary of mourning.

  • From Our Land to Our Land: Essays, Journeys, and Imaginings from a Native Xicanx Writer
    By Luis J. Rodríguez

    ... in the United States, The Wandering Song, edited by Leticia Hernández Linares, Rubén Martínez, and Héctor Tobar. ... A recent top-selling TCP book featured the songs and art of Louie Perez, a founder of the renowned East LA band Los ...

  • Ready Player One
    By Ernest Cline

    -Daniel H. Wilson , author of Robopocalypse " I was blown away by this book . ... Ernie Cline has pulled the raddest of all magic tricks : He's managed to write a novel that's at once serious and playful , that is as fun to read as it ...

  • Love Unknown: The Life and Worlds of Elizabeth Bishop
    By Thomas Travisano

    In Love Unknown, Thomas Travisano, founding president of the Elizabeth Bishop Society, tells the story of the famous poet and traveler's life.

  • Writing Skills Success in 20 Minutes a Day
    By LearningExpress LLC

    Why waste hours when just 20 minutes a day gives students the writing fundamentals they need? This book provides vital instruction for language arts mastery and demonstrates the importance of writing in real-world situations.

  • Book Journal: On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous: A Novel by Ocean Vuong
    By Vooyc Media

    With this book journal you don't have to go through the hassle of re-reading it again. This is where book journals would be so helpful.