review of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
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Course
Engels
Level
VWO / Gymnasium
Book
On Earth We\'re Briefly Gorgeous
This document is a book review with a catchy title.. info about the author, with a brief summary and some information about the style of the book and my opinion about the book. word count 420.
I hope I can help other students with my book report.
I miss you more than I remember you
A review of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, forming the face of your own son.
which was published in 2019, is Boom.” (p4)
Ocean Vuong debut novel. Ocean
Vuong is 33 years old, he is a The narrator attempts to explain to his
Vietnamese American poet. He was mother everything that she never
born in Saigon, Vietnam and raised in understood about him, but he writes it
Hartford. On Earth We’re Briefly all in English, a language that ensures
Gorgeous is New York Times she will never be able to read it.
bestselling novel, which has been
translated into 37 languages. “What I am about to tell you you will
never know… I am writing to reach
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a you-even if each word I put down is
letter that is doomed to never reach its one word further from where you
recipient. Addressed from the narrator are.” (p3)
to his mother, this novel is about him
growing up as a Vietnamese The letter is extremely personal and
immigrant in America, being raised honest as it discusses topics like war,
by a mother and a grandmother that trauma, mental illness, sexuality and
don’t speak English and are still drug abuse. However, this book is
traumatized from a war that he also filled with appreciation and
himself never experienced. He talks beauty. These characters are not just
about family history spanning three about their traumas and violence from
generations and reaching from his the past, but about their beauty and
current life to a war-torn Vietnam in the beauty in surviving the past.
the 1960s.
“All this time I told myself we were
“That time when I was five or six and, born from war- but I was wrong. Ma.
playing a prank, leapt out at you from We were born from beauty” (p231)
behind the hallway door shouting,
“Boom!” You screamed, face raked On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is
and twisted, then burst into sobs, so beautifully written and is so
clutched your chest as you leaned moving. Highly recommended!
against the door, gasping. I stood
bewildered, my toy army helmet tilted Written by Nancy Mshalwat ♡
on my head. I was an American boy 421 words
parroting what I saw on T.V. I didn’t
know that the war was still inside
you, that there was a war to begin
with, that once it enters you it never
leaves – but merely echoes, a sound
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