On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

Critical response

The novel debuted at number six on The New York Times Hardcover Fiction best-sellers list for the week ending June 8, 2019.^[11] It spent six weeks on the list.^[12]

Kirkus Reviews wrote, "The result is an uncategorizable hybrid of what reads like memoir, bildungsroman, and book-length poem. More important than labels, though, is the novel's earnest and open-hearted belief in the necessity of stories and language for our survival. A raw and incandescently written foray into fiction by one of our most gifted poets."^[13] Ron Charles of The Washington Post called the novel "permanently stunning".^[14] In his review for Time, Vietnamese-American novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen wrote, "Vuong refuses to be embarrassed. He transforms the emotional, the visceral, the individual into the political in an unforgettable—indeed, gorgeous—novel, a book that seeks to affect its readers as profoundly as Little Dog is affected".^[15] Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Steph Cha called the novel "a book of sustained beauty and lyricism, earnest and relentless, a series of high notes that trembles exquisitely almost without break."^[16] Writing in The New Yorker, Jia Tolentino saw "structural hallmarks of Vuong's poetry—his skill with elision, juxtaposition, and sequencing" in the novel.^[17] For NPR, Heller McAlpin wrote, "Vuong's language soars as he writes of beauty, survival, and freedom".^[18] E. M. Tran, in the Harvard Review, found the novel's genre difficult to categorize but saw genre as beside the point, as "This writer puts into his letters all of his hurt, happiness, and self-discovery—and in giving a name to those memories and experiences, he brings them into being."^[19]

Dwight Garner of The New York Times gave the novel a mixed review, writing, "Vuong's writing about nail salons, and the way mothers raised their children in them, is moving and rarely less than excellent. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is, at the same time, filled with showy, affected writing, with forced catharses and swollen quasi-profundities. There are enough of these that this novel's keel can lodge in the mud."^[20] Tessa Hadley, in The Guardian, found the subject matter moving but wrote, "the flow of the story is freighted with too much of a different kind of writing: an explicit commentary on the meaning of what's happening, or a sort of choric lyrical lamenting between scenes."^[21]

Censorship

In March 2023, the Conroe Independent School District removed the book from libraries, citing low circulation.^[22] Vuong and PEN America labeled the removal a book ban, and Vuong offered to send free copies of the book to local LGBTQ organizations.^[23][24]

In April 2024, a teacher at the International School Ho Chi Minh City handed out the novel to students, resulting in a post on an online group for parents calling the book "pornographic" and inappropriate for students.^[25] The school took back the books and reprimanded the teacher.^[26] Nguyen Nguyen of the Vietnamese government body Authority of Publication, Printing and Distribution attributed the reaction to differing views about whether children should learn about sexual matters.^[27]

Accolades

Most Anticipated Books

Year-End Lists