Ocean Vuong
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
Ocean Vuong
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
Primarily known in the US as a poet; raised in New England where he still lives.
Born 1988 in Vietnam to a half-Vietnamese/half-American mother and a Vietnamese father
His mother’s mixed ancestry led to her flight with Vuong and her own mother to the Philippines and finally the US
Vuong acknowledges two important factors in his upbringing:
Raised by women (abandoned by father)
His family’s illiteracy and probable dyslexia
“What I do know is that when you’re telling stories it’s very hard to hate each other”: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/oct/03/ocean-vuong-forward-prize-vietnam-war-saigon-night-sky-with-exit-wounds
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/oct/03/ocean-vuong-forward-prize-vietnam-war-saigon-night-sky-with-exit-wounds
Aubade with Burning City
Sample poem:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/56769/aubade-with-burning-city
References the Fall of Saigon (1975) and Bing Crosby’s song White Christmas
Note how the voice narrating the chaos of the evacuation contends with the voice of the classic Christmas Song
What poetic effect is achieved?
Writing in ‘spirals’
Opening sentence: “Let me begin again”
Why does he have to ‘re-start’ the story?
What is the format of the novel?
Letters/correspondence = epistolary format
However, there is only one letter in this novel and it will never be read by its intended recipient
The letter format allows the writer to recall intimate details in a non-chronological order, drop them, then cycle back to them
Repetition as a psychological effect of trauma?
The ‘oxtail’ incident
“No object is in a constant relationship with pleasure, wrote Barthes. For the writer, however, it is the mother tongue. But what if the mother tongue is stunted? What if that tongue is not only the symbol of a void, but is itself a void, what if the tongue is cut out? Can one take pleasure in loss without losing oneself entirely? The Vietnamese I own is the one you gave me, the one whose diction and syntax reach only the second-grade level”, p.34.
Roland Barthes, critical theorist and cultural analyst (1915-1980)
How does this reflection follow from the scene in the butcher’s shop?
Language as motif
How does language (or text) become a controlling idea in Vuong’s storytelling?
“Two languages cancel each other out, suggests Barthes, beckoning a third”, p.35-6
“It has started to rain; the dirt around the woman’s bare feet is flecked with red-brown quotation marks—her body a thing spoken with”, p.37
“There is something running inside the woman, a beginning, or rather, a rearranging of syntax”, p.38.
“she is standing on the life-sized period of her own sentence, alive”, p.43
Juxtaposition
The interweaving of:
Lan and her baby’s encounter with the young American troops
The Vietnamese men eating the brains of the live macaque
Lan’s backstory of her escape from her first marriage
What do these juxtapositions achieve? Relate them back to the sentence that opens this sequence:
“It is a beautiful country depending on where you look”, p.37
Juxtapositions of dates, p.55
His mother’s identity as a mixed-heritage American citizen – like Tiger Woods, “a direct product of the war in Vietnam”, p.49.
American identity
“‘Up to that point I thought I had, if nothing else, a tether to this country, a grandfather, one with a face, an identity, a man who could read and write, one who called me on my birthdays, whom I was a part of, whose American name ran inside my blood. Now that cord was cut. Your face and hair a mess, you got up to flick the Marlboro into the sink. “Everything good is somewhere else, baby. I’m telling you. Everything’”, p.51
“from the porch, a boy, no older than I am, points a toy pistol at us. The gun jumps and his mouth makes blasting noises. His father turns to yell at him. He shoots once, two more times. From the window of my helicopter, I look at him. I look him dead in the eyes and do what you do. I refuse to die”, p.61