A brief moment of splendor

A brief moment of splendor is presented in the form of a letter from a son to his mother who will never read it. The daughter of an American soldier and a Vietnamese peasant woman, she is illiterate, barely speaks English and works in a nail salon in the United States. She is the pure product of a forgotten war. Her son, whose skin is too light for a Vietnamese but not light enough for an American, undertakes to retrace their family history: the schizophrenia of his grandmother traumatized by enemy bombs in Vietnam, the hard fists of his mother against his child's body, his first love marked by a fatal seal, his discovery of desire, his homosexuality and the redemptive power of writing.

This debut novel, written in a language of grandiose beauty, explores with astonishing urgency and grace the questions of race, class and masculinity. Ocean Vuong signs a dive into the troubled waters of violence, uprooting and addiction, which tenderness and compassion always deftly counterbalance. A book of overwhelming accuracy on the power of words to heal wounds that have been open for generations.