Poetry Foundation: Ocean Vuong
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/ocean-vuong
This webpage includes more biographical information on Vuong and is a fantastic introduction to his poetry. The title of this novel is actually the name of one of his poems in his 2016 poetry collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds. As such, some critics encourage readers to engage with his earlier work, as Vuong returns to similar themes of intergenerational trauma, violence, and identity in On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous.
Ocean Vuong in Conversation with Tommy Orange
https://www.cityarts.net/event/ocean-vuong/
This event appeared in the series "On Arts" from City Arts and Lectures and includes a transcript of a conversation between Vuong and Tommy Orange, author of the award-winning novel There There. Vuong and Orange discuss writing, poetics, and their reading practice.
Phenomenology
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy offers more information on phenomenology—its definitions, history, theories, classical texts, and more.
"On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous review: Wisdom without voltage"
This link is to one of the few mixed reviews that are published about Vuong's debut novel. Though the author Sean Hewitt commends the range of themes that Vuong explores in his text, along with his lyricism and poignant phrases, he remarks that the form of the letter is an inadequate mode of structuring the text and that some of his "beautiful phrases" are so abstracted and "vague" that they run the risk of becoming empty in meaning. While Hewitt offers some commentary on what he believes are the book's most compelling themes (i.e., nature of masculinity and the limitations of language), he ultimately believes that the novel lacks focus and a compelling structure and that "the committed reader will find much value, but others may give up before they reach the end."
"The Beauty of Men: Ocean Vuong’s 'On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous'"
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-beauty-of-men-ocean-vuongs-on-earth-were-briefly-gorgeous/
Min Hyoung Song's review of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous begins with a personal anecdote, which is largely a grand departure from other reviews of the text. Doing so both allows Song to draw parallels from his own experiences in relation to the experiences charted in the novel and showcases the entanglement of the personal within the deeply emotional affective sphere of the novel. Though this rhetorical strategy, Song is able to raise questions about the body, desire, and masculinity.
