On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is the debut novel by Vietnamese-American poet Ocean Vuong, published by Penguin Press on June 4, 2019. An epistolary novel, it is written in the form of a letter from a Vietnamese American son to his illiterate mother.
““What were you before you met me?"
"I think I was drowning"
"And what are you now?"
"Water””
Source: On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
