Race and Racism Theme Analysis

In addition to gender and sexuality, Ocean Vuong also explores race and racism in On Earth we’re Briefly Gorgeous. Vuong’s protagonist, Little Dog, is a Vietnamese American who immigrates to the United States from Vietnam in 1990. From the moment Little Dog and his family arrive, color proves to be of paramount importance in American society. “Do I look like a real American?” Little Dog’s mother, Rose, asks while trying on secondhand clothes not long after arriving in the United States. Little Dog is not yet five years old, but he still knows that to be a “real American” is to be white, which Little Dog will never be. Little Dog faces considerable racism growing up in Hartford, Connecticut, but the stories he tells of his mother and grandmother, Lan, back in Saigon suggest that skin color is just as important in their native Vietnam. In Vietnam, Lan is considered “dark,” and Rose, whose father was a white American soldier stationed in Vietnam during the war, is nearly light enough to “pass” for white. Through Little Dog and his family, Vuong illustrates the racism endured by people of color and ultimately argues that it is one’s differences—such as skin color and race—that makes one beautiful.

After Little Dog and his family arrive in the United States, race and racism is an everyday part of their lives, which highlights the racism that plagues American society. When Little Dog first arrives in Connecticut, he speaks very little English, and the boys at his school slap him around and bully him. “Look at me when I’m talking to you,” a boy named Kyle orders Little Dog at school, adding, “Speak English.” Kyle immediately establishes power and dominance over Little Dog because he is Vietnamese. Rose is a manicurist, and she often brings home mannequin hands to practice on. Rose’s hands are darker than the mannequins, which are “pink and beige, the only shades they come in.” White is considered the default race in America, and this status is reflected in the color of the mannequins. Furthermore, Little Dog reads about an article in an El Paso newspaper from 1884, in which a white man is accused of murdering a Chinese man. The case was dismissed because, according to Texas law, a human being was only defined as white, Mexican, or African American, and the Chinese man was none of those things. As an Asian boy himself, Little Dog lives in a society that has not always counted his race as human, which again reflects the racism of American society.

However, Little Dog also recounts the stories of Lan and Rose, who also face discrimination and abuse in Vietnam because of their skin color, which suggests such hate is not just an American problem. After Lan gives birth to Rose, the child of a white American solider, the people in Lan’s village call Lan “a traitor and a whore for sleeping with the enemy.” Both Lan and Rose are ostracized because of Lan’s relationship with the white soldier. As Rose grows up in the very same village, she is chased by the people, who slap “buffalo shit on her face and shoulders to make her brown again, as if to be born lighter was a wrong that could be reversed.” The villagers hate Rose, just as they hated her white father. What’s more, the people in Rose’s village chase her with spoons, which they take to her arms and yell: “Get the white off her, get the white off her!” The Vietnamese people try to scrape the white from Rose’s skin, which again underscores the racially motivated hate of the Vietnamese people.

“Remember,” Rose says to Little Dog every morning as he leaves for school in Connecticut, “don’t draw attention to yourself. You’re already Vietnamese.” While Little Dog is shy and generally observes his mother’s warning, he refuses to look at himself in the same way. Little Dog is proud of his Vietnamese identity, and he won’t hide who he is. “To be gorgeous, you must first be seen,” Little Dog says, “but to be seen allows you to be hunted.” Little Dog embraces his “yellow” identity, which is, he argues, one of the things that makes him both beautiful and hated.