“Fruit of Violence”: The Subaltern Refugee and the Intersection of Oppressions in Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

Year 2022, Issue: 56, 23 - 44, 01.11.2022

Fatma Eren

Abstract

This article examines Ocean Vuong’s semi-autobiographical
novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by focusing on how the oppressions of race, gender, class, and sexuality overlap for the Vietnamese
refugees and immigrants in America. Among many difficulties, many
Vietnamese lives are marked by the intergenerational transmission of
emotional pain, and it deterred parents from forming a healthy relationship with their offsprings. As a queer, second-generation Vietnamese
American writer, Vuong is raised in a toxic household since he is subjected to physical and emotional abuse of his war traumatized mother.
On Earth, written in epistolary form, offers a glimpse into the many-layered anxieties, insecurities of Vuong’s family and reveals how
the legacy of the Vietnam War still pervades their life in all spheres in
America. His narrative, “as a line of communication,” is a significant
step towards liberating the women in his family from the subaltern
status. Speaking from the terrain of otherness and rejecting castration
by the forces that victimized his mother and grandmother, Vuong also
proves that it is possible to transform the resentment he harbors into
something fruitful, and anger can be instrumental in reconciliation and
healing.

Keywords

The Vietnam War, Ocean Vuong, Vietnamese American, Trauma, the Subaltern

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