Ocean Vuong has occupied my brain for the better half of four years. 

As a prolific reader since childhood, I have had my fair share of YA dystopian novels, Wattpad fanfics, and enough children’s fantasy series to last a lifetime. (If you have read the Guardians of Ga’Hoole series by Kathryn Lasky, please let me know via email at editors@trentarthur.ca so I know it was not in fact a wild fever dream I conjured up.) There did, however, come a deciding moment in my life when my love of books took a decidedly drastic turn from a carefree hobby and became a full-blown obsession. To pepper in some pretension from my respective position as an English major, there is something remarkable about transitioning from relatively harmless stories, to discovering more mature literature—for a lack of a better word—the likes of which Ocean Vuong undeniably sets the standard. 

I first came across Vuong on the platform where all great ideas emerge: Pinterest. On one of my many nightly spirals of poetry excerpts, a quote from Vuong’s novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous came across my screen. Knowing nothing about Vuong, his work, or even the novel in general, I ordered it without a second thought, despite having only read a short quote. It was the early stages of the pandemic after all and considering I had yet to reckon with my nascent online shopping addiction, I figured books were a proactive way to spend what little money I had. 

After reading On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, I knew I was roped in for good. I’m a glutton for suffering just as much as the next person, and Vuong’s work continuously leaves me feeling hollow inside—but not for no reason. Pain with no purpose within literature is another conversation entirely, but Vuong’s infliction of pain is not intentional, it merely comes with the territory of his content. 

With three major publications, Night Sky With Exit Wounds, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, and Time Is a Mother, Vuong writes from the perspective of a queer American-Vietnamese immigrant living in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. If you’ll have me, allow me to explain my love and gut-wrenching obsession with one of the greatest contemporary writers of our time. 

‍Night Sky With Exit Wounds

‍Night Sky With Exit Wounds is the beginning of the holy trifecta. Coming in under a hundred pages, this rather short collection of poems is a beautiful, melancholic, and vulnerable introduction to Vuong’s story as not only a writer but as a queer Vietnamese Immigrant living in America. Vuong’s identity and his search for meaning while reconciling with a world that was fundamentally not made for him is central to his work. 

Throughout this collection, Vuong walks hand-in-hand with the violence of his bloodline as he is a breathing product of an unimaginable war that destroyed his country—his grandmother fell in love with a white American soldier and thus, Vuong would not exist without said bloodshed. A harrowing fact, one Vuong writes about in one of my favourite poems of this collection, “Notebook Fragments”. It outlines youthful loneliness and uncertainty through disjointed line breaks seemingly with no connection, and yet Vuong is able to string together lines about pubic hair, overdoses, Jack Kerouac, God, and war in one coherent poem. 

Vuong is a genius, my admiration for his work is unrelenting.  

His talent and unyielding command of attention blend effortlessly. Vuong is able to take mundane aspects of daily life and join them together in a stream of consciousness that speaks to the larger idea of mortality and walking in the aftermath of war in a cadence that is unambiguous to Vuong’s subtle and commanding voice. Quite frankly, I would pay an absurd amount of money to even read his grocery list. 

‍Obsession doesn’t even begin to cover it.

There is a harrowing sense of loneliness throughout Vuong's collection. He writes narratives that are full of hope and bittersweet reconciliation with humanity, beauty, and destruction at the core of morality. Through sexual exploration and reflection on living in a world as a queer person of colour post 9/11 and the Vietnam War, Night Sky With Exit Wounds is a devastating flirtation with grief and nostalgia for a life not yet lived, and a life left behind in the rubble of a war nobody signed up for. 

This poetry collection follows Vuong’s exploration of self, other, and community. Vuong’s family dynamics—disjointed from the war, his use of sex as a metaphor for something much larger than pleasure, and a soft, gentle voice caressing the shrapnel of his identity are beautifully written and while indicative of a devastating reality in the aftermath of violence. 

Vuong’s writing is nothing short of historic. I am so unbelievably enamoured with Vuong and his work. He is, in my humble opinion, the single greatest contemporary writer of our time. 

For a debut full-length poetry collection to win the T.S Eliot Prize and the Whiting Award speaks volumes to Vuong’s unimaginable beauty as an artist—if you don’t trust my word for it. 

‍On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

‍On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a novel written by a son to a mother who is illiterate. The narration follows a young, queer, Vietnamese-American boy named Little Dog. Vuong shared during his interview with Seth Meyers that in Vietnamese culture, for a mother to name their child after a weak, measly creature is a way to ward off evil spirits. This decision to tell his story through a character only known to readers as Little Dog speaks to the relationship between mother and son that dominates this novel—a relationship violent as it was gentle.

Vuong’s mother is undeniably a driving force behind his writing. Having been raised by women—specifically women living with PTSD as a result of war and domestic abuse, Vuong speaks openly about the relationship between strength and violence that surrounded his childhood. In this semi-autobiographical novel, Vuong blends fiction with his memories growing up in Hartford, Connecticut—stating that he “wanted to start with truth and end with art.” 

The novel focuses heavily on the symptoms of war. Vuong and Little Dog share a white American grandfather who met their grandmother during the Vietnam War. Throughout the novel, one comes to understand how a war can rage on even with the absence of gunfire. In an interview with Amanpour & Company, Vuong spoke to Michel Martin about how war played a part in the process of not only writing this novel, but Vuong’s life as well. When speaking about his mother and grandmother, Vuong said “The poison of war entered them, and they passed it down to me.”

Everything Little Dog writes, he writes with the knowledge that it will never be read. Through a tender exploration of sexuality and American masculinity, to love, heartbreak, addiction, and grief, Little Dog grapples with his childhood in the only way he knows how; through words.

It's this use of language that ultimately divides not only Little Dog and his mother, but Vuong and his mother as well. On the podcast, “On Being With Krista Tippett” Vuong shared that the first time his mother heard him perform his poetry, despite not understanding the English, she began to weep because she never imagined she would see white people applauding her immigrant son. 

‍On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous takes this core moment between Vuong and his mother and dissects the relationship between race, class, gender, and sexuality and how it correlates to living as a second-generation immigrant within America—only for it to go unread by the person it was addressed to. 

I read On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous cover to cover in two days, then re-read it again months later. Now, three years later, I’ve gone back to this book a total of four times. It is difficult to write about this novel without feeling like I’m leaving out key parts—there is simply too much to contain within a word count, and there are too many moving parts to be described in one synopsis. 

No matter how many times I re-read this novel, there is still a pit left in me at the end. It's beautiful and haunting sown together with a continuous thread of compassion that Vuong uses to detail Little Dog’s life as a son, immigrant, and lover. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous takes a body whose story has been blackened by American history and says yes, this story is important, this life is gorgeous.

‍Time Is a Mother

Despite having purchased this poetry collection upon its initial release, I have only recently finished it. I could never bring myself to read it cover-to-cover after knowing how it came to life.

Vuong’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer only three months before the publication of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. She passed away that same year. 

The singular aspect that ties humans together is the shared fact that we will all die—it's perhaps the only similarity to be found among us as a collective species. Despite this known aspect of existence, how does one move on after death? In a tender and intimate ode to the life of his mother and an ode to his grief, Vuong uses this collection to find power in the aftershock of her passing. 

‍Time Is a Mother is Vuong reconciling with her death, learning how to live in grief, and memorializing his mother on the page. With the story of Noah’s Ark a running theme, Time Is a Mother begs the question; who would you bring with you at the end of the world?

There are many things within this poetry collection I am careful not to repeat for fear of sounding like a broken record, as so much of Vuong’s writing is a testament to the lived experience of his identity and unique perspective on American culture. However, what speaks to me differently in this collection is Vuong’s breakdown of what makes a family—to be a vessel for violence, love, and grief. Broken into four chapters, Time Is a Mother is not pain for the sake of pain, but rather speaks to a beacon of hope when facing unimaginable loss.

A poem in Time Is a Mother that I urge everyone to read—regardless if you pick this collection up in its entirety—is “Künstlerroman”. Spanning ten pages, Vuong walks backwards through his life in a testament to the raging grief rippling through him. Read even without the context of this collection’s creation, it breathes classic Vuong for its unimaginable writing. Sometimes, it can be difficult to comprehend the elegance of Vuong’s writing.

He amazes me to no end.

The first sentence in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous—which is dedicated to his mother—is “Let me begin again. Dear Ma,” In the last chapter of Time Is a Mother, Vuong writes a poem called “Dear Rose” which begins with “Let me begin again now that you’re gone Ma.” Truly, it destroys my soul after understanding the vital role his mother played in the development of Vuong as a storyteller, and how his story is never finished even when his mother is gone. 

“Dear Rose” is a lengthy poem enjambed together in a stream of consciousness that strips mourning down to its barest bones in an aching letter to his mother, who still, cannot read. In his sorrow, Vuong leaves claw marks on the memories of his mother in mundane moments of her life as he grapples with her absence in everything apart from his poetry. 

The sequence of poetry in this collection is an almost unreal personification of mourning, despair, and hope. To walk along with Vuong as he writes about his mother’s life—from his first poetry collection to his last—is an experience I cannot recommend enough. 

His work is one continuous story, Vuong is the most attentive and remarkable writer I have ever had the privilege of reading, and one I know with absolute certainty will continue to inspire and set the bar to unimaginable heights with each collection he releases. I truly don’t know if I will ever run out of words to say about Vuong, but for now, I will stop here.