On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous *** (of 4)

A boy immigrates from Vietnam with his war-scarred mother and schizophrenic grandmother. Together in Hartford, Connecticut, Mom works exhausting hours in a nail salon while her son becomes fully American. Mom never learns to read English, so this book acts as a letter from son to mother. It is a letter she will never be able to read.

Growing up in Hartford's slums and working summers as a tobacco picker, Little Dog, as he is called, absorbs drugs and his burgeoning homosexuality. Little Dog's recounting of the stress of learning a new language, of renting on the wrong side of town, of being picked on for having yellow skin and a pink bicycle ring so true it is hard to imagine any part of this being fictional. 

If you are a fan of poetry, Ocean Vuong, is a soaring, visionary, prize-winning poet whose language elevates a simple story of immigration and coming-of-age into a Homeric epic. If, like me, poetry is not exactly your thing, a 285-page saga, like Icarus flying toward the sun, sinks beneath its own melting wings.