Gay Reads Book Club: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
Join the Gay Reads book club to discuss classic and contemporary literature by LGBTQ2IA+ authors. We’ll read across genres to uncover queer sensibilities, alternative canons, and exciting new voices. The club meets every two months at La Petite Librairie Drawn & Quarterly with host Kathleen Fraser, and is open to all.
Our next meeting is November 19th, at 7 PM, we’ll discuss Ocean Vuong’s novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.
**We offer a 20% discount on On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong from now until the meeting date.**
By purchasing your book at Librairie Drawn & Quarterly you help support free events like this one, independent publishing and retailing, our neighborhood, and authors both local and from around the world who depend on independent bookstores for their livelihood. You also get to take advantage of a great discount! Your support is appreciated.
ABOUT THE BOOK
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one’s own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.
With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
cean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds, winner of the Whiting Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize. His writings have also been featured in The Atlantic, Harper’s, The Nation, New Republic, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is his first novel.