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!
