On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, Vietnamese Amerasians and our BookBrowse Review of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. When we meet the narrator of this novel, we don't know his name, only that he is writing to his mother in a language she cannot read. He says, "I am writing from inside a body that used to be yours. Which is to say, I am writing as a son" (10). How does the book explore the interplay of language—how he identifies himself and communicates the world—and lived, corporeal experience?
2. What do the animals in the book—the monarch butterflies, the buffaloes, even the "little dog" after which the narrator is named—represent for the narrator? How does he try to understand their instinctual movements and behaviors?
3. Names are precarious and shifting throughout the novel, for both the narrator and his mother. How does he feel about the name his grandmother gives him, Little Dog? Does his reflection that "to love something, then, is to name it after something so worthless it might be left untouched—and alive. A name, thin as air, can also be a shield" suggest acceptance or dismissal of his given name (18)?

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Penguin Books. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.