Little Dog writes a letter to his mother, a letter he knows she will never read. But he has so much to say.

Both Little Dog and his mother are outsiders: she, an immigrant, a survivor of the Vietnam war; he, a queer artist, a survivor of the opioid crisis. They are bound together by blood, which is to say, by violence, by trauma--but also by history, by family.

In searing, looping prose, Ocean Vuong chips away calcified layers of socialization, culture, and language, exposing the raw, instinctual love and sexuality at the crux of human connection.