“TOO MUCH JOY, I SWEAR, IS LOST”: Ambiguity in Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

Abstract

Traditionally perceived as language malfunctioning leading to undesirable dilemmas, ambiguity and its literary potential remain largely unexplored. This chapter posits that aesthetics of ambiguity are an especially powerful means to narrate interstitial identities and attempts an ‘ambiguity reading’ of Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019). What emerges from this analysis is that a lyrical use of ambiguity is not only a marker of Vuong’s unique craft but also sheds powerful light on interstitial identities such as that of the protagonist, Little Dog, who grows up Vietnamese, mixed-race, migrant, and gay in the US. Through his use of ambiguity, Vuong’s migrant and queer voice strives to materialize the hesitations, stutters, silences, and slippages that happen in the blank spaces between languages. The chapter is mostly concerned with the ambiguities that emerge from the convergence of the protagonist’s two languages, Vietnamese and English - the mother(‘s) tongue and the language of the everyday. Ambiguity helps to show how both languages are either insufficient to articulate the protagonist’s inner world or throw it into crisis by being too present, too intrusive, at all times.