Ocean Vuong, bestselling author of 'On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous,' talks about writing and inspiration with the L.A. Times Book Club.
Vuong drew laughs as he talked about the logistics of writing his debut novel,in a conversation with Times reporter Carolina A. Miranda at Hollywood’s Montalbán Theatre.
His 2019 book is written in the form of a letter from the narrator, a young man in his 20s known only as Little Dog, to his illiterate Vietnamese mother who hardly speaks English. The book delves into a family history with origins in Vietnam and expands to Hartford, Conn., exploring a complicated, loving relationship between a mother and her son, as well as themes of race, war, class, sexuality and masculinity.
“It felt important to have my first book be something between two yellow lines,” Vuong said, choking up as he spoke about his mother. “It all felt really important to me. ... As an Asian American, particularly as a Southeast Asian American, we come out of a diaspora of war. Our parents are the first generation to come out of that trauma.”Toni Morrison“I never saw a [piece of] literature that took the experience of survival so respectfully,” he said, pausing.
It’s been a whirlwind year for the 31-year-old poet and author, who teaches English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous,” which blends fiction and memoir, was published in June and became an immediate sensation. In September, Vuong received a, freeing him from financial worries, at least for the next five years.
“For me, as a poet, I was always beginning with truth,” Vuong said about why he wrote a fictional autobiography. “So I think my impulse was the impulse of the poets before me, from Dante to Homer to Dickinson. They wrote myths out of reality. As a novelist, that seemed natural to me, to begin to see the truth as only the foundation.”
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