ON EARTH WE'RE BRIEFLY GORGEOUS is a letter from a son to a mother - a boy known only as Little Dog writing to a mother who cannot read. His letter traces his family's traumas from the horror of the Vietnam War to the devastation of the opioid epidemic. Even amid the destruction, Little Dog's words find beauty inside the desperation.

I don't even know how to begin to write a review for this book. It's like trying to find the words to describe an art installation. This book is about trauma and violence, but also about holding tight on to the people you love in an effort to survive. Race and class and sexuality and masculinity and a dozen other issues collide with each other to paint a rich portrait of a young man just trying to make himself seen.

Vuong explores language deeply in this book. Not just how we use words, but the roots and nuances of words, phrases, and idioms, in both English and Vietnamese. His writing is somehow both dreamlike and clear as a bell at the same time.

Whether or not the narrator's mother ever comes to understand and clearly see Little Dog for all that he is, we the readers are shown his full complexity, and that's really the point of this book, I think - to say that to be seen is to exist, and to be misunderstood or overlooked is to die, figuratively and literally.