SONIC NARRATIVE: LISTENING TO “ON EARTH WE'RE BRIEFLY GORGEOUS” BY OCEAN VUONG
Main Article Content
Abstract
This study investigates the relationship between sound and narrative in the work by Vietnamese American writer Ocean Vuong, in order to explain how the author listens to the marginalized voice. This article focuses in particular on the semi-autobiographical novel “On earth we're briefly gorgeous” foregrounding the work offers a vibrant soundscape and how the sound functions as potential texts of memory. Drawing on an interdisciplinary approach that brings together literature, auditory anthropology and sound studies, this project positions sound as an epistemological agent capable of participating in the construction of historical and cultural discourses. Thereby, a soundscape emerges through layers of narrative – marked by states of liminality and uncompletion – yet retains the capacity to engage readers to dialogic descriptions. The paper examines gendered auditory experiences and the construction of identity. It emphasizes the power of listening to navigate colonial sonic legacies, and to support the diverse voices of the Vietnamese American community.
Keywords
soundscape, auditory anthropology, Ocean Vuong, sonic narrative, listening
Article Details
References
Appadurai, A. (1990). Topographies of the self: Praise and emotion in Hindu India. In C. A. Lutz & L. Abu-Lughod (Eds.), Language and the politics of emotion (pp. 92-112). Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/vn/universitypress/subjects/psychology/social-psychology/language-and-politics-emotion#contents
Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization (2nd ed.). University of Minnesota Press. https://mtusociology.github.io/assets/files/[Arjun_Appadurai]_Modernity_at_Large_Cultural_Dim(Bookos.org).pdf
Attali, J. (1985). Noise: The political economy of music: Theory and history of literature (Vol.16) (B. Massumi, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press. https://www.upress.umn.edu/9780816612871/noise/
Augoyard, J.-F, & Torgue, H. (Eds.). (2005). Sonic experience: A guide to everyday sounds (A. McCartney & D. Paquette, Trans.). McGill-Queen’s University Press. (Original work published 1955). https://doi.org/10.1515/9780773576919
Bakshi, S. (2020). The decolonial eye/I: Decolonial enunciations of queer diasporic practices. Interventions, 22(4), 533–551. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2020.1749707
Bishop, S. (2009). Reading with Freud. Women: A Cultural Review, 20(3), 339–341. https://doi.org/10.1080/09574040903285909
Briain, L. Ó. (2013). “Happy to be born Hmong”: The Implications of a transnational musical network for the Vietnamese-Hmong People. Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 8(2), 115-148. https://doi.org/10.1525/vs.2013.8.2.115
Bui, L. (2016). The refugee repertoire: Performing and staging the postmemories of violence. MELUS, 41(3), 112–132. https://doi.org/10.1093/melus/mlw034
Cannon, A. M. (2012). Epic directions for the study of the Vietnamese diaspora. Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 7(3), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1525/vs.2012.7.3.1
Cannon, A. M. (2021). Awakening the soul with the left hand: narration and healing in Vietnam’s diasporic traditional music. Ethnomusicology, 65(1), 62-85. https://doi.org/10.5406/ethnomusicology.65.1.0062
Ceraso, S. (2014). (Re)Educating the senses: Multimodal listening, bodily learning, and the composition of sonic experiences. College English, 77(2), 102–123. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24238169
Connor, S. (2004). Edison’s teeth: Touching hearing. In V. Erlmann (Ed.), Hearing cultures: Essays on sound, listening and modernity (1st ed.) (pp. 153–172). Berg. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003103189
Donnelly, K., & Mollaghan, A. (2023). Haunted soundtracks (1st ed.). Bloomsbury Academic. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/haunted-soundtracks-9781501389566/
Elhariry, Y., & Yamaguchi. L. (Eds.). (2025). Literature as sound studies (1st ed.). Bloomsbury Academic. https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/literature-as-sound-studies-9798765121375/
Erlmann, V. (Ed.). (2004). Hearing cultures: Essays on sound, listening and modernity (1st ed.). Berg. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003103189
Espiritu, Y. L. (2014). Body counts: The Vietnam war and militarized refugees (1st ed.). University of California Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt7zw04n
Farinati, L., & Claudia, F. (2017). The force of listening (1st ed.). Errant Bodies Press. https://errantbodies.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Force_of_Listening.pdf
Garland, E. (2019). Earwitness: A search for sonic understanding in stories (1st ed.). New Welsh Rarebyte. https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=32427350359
Ghosh, S., & Wang, L. (2003). Transnationalism and identity: a tale of two faces and multiple lives. The Canadian Geographer, 47(3), 269–282. https://doi.org/10.1111/1541-0064.00022
Griffin, M. (1999). The great war photographs: Constructing myths of history and photojournalism. In B. Brennen & H. Hardt (Eds.), Picturing the past: Media, history, and photography (pp. 122-157). University of Illinois Press. https://www.academia.edu/590488/The_Great_War_Photographs_Constructing_Myths_
of_History
Hansen, S. (2010). Book review: The Latehomecomer by Kao Kalia Yang. Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement, 5(1), Article 9, 1-8. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48684495
Hart, K. (2024). Narrative space and the figure of the refugee in the early life writing of Ocean Vuong. English Studies, 105(7), 1123-1138. https://doi.org/10.1080/0013838X.2024.2417490
Hong, M.-L. K. (2016). Reframing the archive: Vietnamese refugee narratives in the post-9/11 period. MELUS, 41(3), 18–41. https://doi.org/10.1093/melus/mlw021
Hven, S. (2022). Narrative spaces and sonic environments. In Enacting the worlds of cinema. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197555101.003.0006
Ihde, D. (2007). Listening and voice: Phenomenologies of sound (2nd ed.). State University of New York Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.18254008
Kahn, D. (2016). Sound leads elsewhere. In M. Cobussen, V. Meelberg & B. Truax (Eds.), The Routledge companion to sounding art (pp. 41–50). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315770567
LaBelle, B. (2018). Sonic agency: Sound and emergent forms of resistance (1st ed.). Goldsmiths Press. https://brandonlabelle.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/LaBelle_Sonic_Agency.pdf
Librandi, M. (2018). Writing by ear: Clarice Lispector and the aural novel (1st ed.). University of Toronto Press. https://doi.org/10.3138/9781487514730
Malleret, L. (2025). Những tập quán và tinh thần của một dân tộc. Nhiều tác giả (Eds.), Việt Nam: những tiếng vọng từ quá khứ. Nhà xuất bản Thế giới. [The customs and spirit of a nation. In Vietnam: Echoes from the past. (M. Thu, Trans.) (pp. 201–220). The Gioi Publishers]. https://shop.alphabooks.vn/viet-nam-nhung-tieng-vong-tu-qua-khu-p39108494.html
Marazzi, A. (2019). Aural Anthropology, a Way of Listening. Visual Anthropology, 32(2), 193–204. https://doi.org/10.1080/08949468.2019.1603037
Moten, F. (2003). In the break: The aesthetics of the black radical tradition (1st ed.). University of Minnesota Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.cttts6jk
Neumann, B. (2020). “Our mother tongue, then, is no mother at all – but an orphan”: The mother tongue and translation in Ocean Vuong’s On earth we’re briefly gorgeous. Anglia, 138(2), 277-298. https://doi.org/10.1515/ang-2020-0023
Nguyen, V. T. (2025). To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other. Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.23212013
Ostler, N. (2011). Empires of the Word. HarperCollins. https://www.perlego.com/book/586985/empires-of-the-word-pdf
Papaeti, A. (2023). The songs of fire (1975): Sonic narratives of resistance and collective memory. Twentieth-Century Music, 20(1), 6–22. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1478572222000482.
Robinson, D. (2020). Hungry listening: Resonant theory for indigenous sound studies (1st ed.). University of Minnesota Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctvzpv6bb
Rody, C. (2018). Between “I” and “We”: Viet Thanh Nguyen’s interethnic multitudes. PMLA, 133(2), 396–405. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45179392
Salomé, V. (2006). Sonic memory material as ‘pathetic trigger’. Organised Sound, 11(1), 13-18. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1355771806000033
Schafer, R. M. (1977). The soundscape: Our sonic environment and the tuning of the world. Destiny Books. https://monoskop.org/images/d/d4/Schafer_R_Murray_The_Soundscape_Our_Sonic_Environment_and_the_Tuning_of_the_World_1994.pdf
Schacter, D. L. (1996). Searching for memory: The brain, the mind, and the past (1st ed.). Basic Books. https://dschacter.scholars.harvard.edu/publications/searching-memory-brain-mind-and-past
Seán, S. (2015). The memory of sound: Preserving the sonic past. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315883045
Stadler, G. (2010). Introduction: Breaking sound barriers. Social Text, 28(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-2009-057
Stein, J. A. (2013). American literary history and queer temporalities. American Literary History, 25(4), 855–869. https://doi.org/10.1093/alh/ajt043
Sterne, J. (2003). The audible past: Cultural origins of sound reproduction (1st ed.). Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11hpj6z
Sterne, J. (2012). Sonic imaginations. In J. Sterne (Ed.), The sound studies reader (pp. 1–17). Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/The-Sound-Studies-Reader/Sterne/p/book/9780415771313
Stoever-Ackerman, J. (2010). Splicing the sonic color-line: Tony Schwartz remixes postwar Nueva York. Social Text, 28(1), 59–85. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-2009-060
Stoever, L. J. (2016). The sonic color line: Race and the cultural politics of listening. New York University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1bj4s55
Suppes, P. (2009). Rhythm and meaning in poetry. Midwest studies in Philosophy, XXXIII, 159-166. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4975.2009.00188.x
Thompson, E. (2002). The soundscape of modernity: architectural acoustics and the culture of listening in America, 1900-1933. The MIT Press. https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262701068/the-soundscape-of-modernity/
Trinh T. M-h. (2010). Elsewhere, within here: Immigration, refugeeism and the boundary event (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203847657
Vuong, O. (2022a, February 17). A “love letter” for our community. Thích Nhất Hạnh Foundation. https://thichnhathanhfoundation.org/blog/2022/2/17/a-love-letter-for-our-community-by-ocean-vuong
Vuong, O. (2022b, December 20). From the Archive: The weight of our living on hope, fire escapes, and visible desperation. The Rumpus. https://therumpus.net/2022/12/20/the-weight-of-our-living-on-hope-fire-escapes-and-visible-desperation/
Vuong, O. (2024). Một thoáng ta rực rỡ ở nhân gian. Nhà xuất bản Hội Nhà văn. [On earth we're briefly gorgeous. (K. Nguyên, Trans.). Vietnamese Writer’s Association Publishing House]. (Original work published 2021). https://nhanam.vn/mot-thoang-ta-ruc-ro-o-nhan-gian-tb-2026
Weitzel, M. D. (2018). Audializing migrant bodies: Sound and security at the border. Security Dialogue, 49(6), 421–437. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26979672
Zhu, J. (2024). For the ‘briefly gorgeous’ moment: Imagism and queer aesthetics in Ocean Vuong’s On earth we’re briefly gorgeous. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 67(1), 12–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2024.2421324
Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization (2nd ed.). University of Minnesota Press. https://mtusociology.github.io/assets/files/[Arjun_Appadurai]_Modernity_at_Large_Cultural_Dim(Bookos.org).pdf
Attali, J. (1985). Noise: The political economy of music: Theory and history of literature (Vol.16) (B. Massumi, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press. https://www.upress.umn.edu/9780816612871/noise/
Augoyard, J.-F, & Torgue, H. (Eds.). (2005). Sonic experience: A guide to everyday sounds (A. McCartney & D. Paquette, Trans.). McGill-Queen’s University Press. (Original work published 1955). https://doi.org/10.1515/9780773576919
Bakshi, S. (2020). The decolonial eye/I: Decolonial enunciations of queer diasporic practices. Interventions, 22(4), 533–551. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2020.1749707
Bishop, S. (2009). Reading with Freud. Women: A Cultural Review, 20(3), 339–341. https://doi.org/10.1080/09574040903285909
Briain, L. Ó. (2013). “Happy to be born Hmong”: The Implications of a transnational musical network for the Vietnamese-Hmong People. Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 8(2), 115-148. https://doi.org/10.1525/vs.2013.8.2.115
Bui, L. (2016). The refugee repertoire: Performing and staging the postmemories of violence. MELUS, 41(3), 112–132. https://doi.org/10.1093/melus/mlw034
Cannon, A. M. (2012). Epic directions for the study of the Vietnamese diaspora. Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 7(3), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1525/vs.2012.7.3.1
Cannon, A. M. (2021). Awakening the soul with the left hand: narration and healing in Vietnam’s diasporic traditional music. Ethnomusicology, 65(1), 62-85. https://doi.org/10.5406/ethnomusicology.65.1.0062
Ceraso, S. (2014). (Re)Educating the senses: Multimodal listening, bodily learning, and the composition of sonic experiences. College English, 77(2), 102–123. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24238169
Connor, S. (2004). Edison’s teeth: Touching hearing. In V. Erlmann (Ed.), Hearing cultures: Essays on sound, listening and modernity (1st ed.) (pp. 153–172). Berg. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003103189
Donnelly, K., & Mollaghan, A. (2023). Haunted soundtracks (1st ed.). Bloomsbury Academic. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/haunted-soundtracks-9781501389566/
Elhariry, Y., & Yamaguchi. L. (Eds.). (2025). Literature as sound studies (1st ed.). Bloomsbury Academic. https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/literature-as-sound-studies-9798765121375/
Erlmann, V. (Ed.). (2004). Hearing cultures: Essays on sound, listening and modernity (1st ed.). Berg. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003103189
Espiritu, Y. L. (2014). Body counts: The Vietnam war and militarized refugees (1st ed.). University of California Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt7zw04n
Farinati, L., & Claudia, F. (2017). The force of listening (1st ed.). Errant Bodies Press. https://errantbodies.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Force_of_Listening.pdf
Garland, E. (2019). Earwitness: A search for sonic understanding in stories (1st ed.). New Welsh Rarebyte. https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=32427350359
Ghosh, S., & Wang, L. (2003). Transnationalism and identity: a tale of two faces and multiple lives. The Canadian Geographer, 47(3), 269–282. https://doi.org/10.1111/1541-0064.00022
Griffin, M. (1999). The great war photographs: Constructing myths of history and photojournalism. In B. Brennen & H. Hardt (Eds.), Picturing the past: Media, history, and photography (pp. 122-157). University of Illinois Press. https://www.academia.edu/590488/The_Great_War_Photographs_Constructing_Myths_
of_History
Hansen, S. (2010). Book review: The Latehomecomer by Kao Kalia Yang. Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement, 5(1), Article 9, 1-8. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48684495
Hart, K. (2024). Narrative space and the figure of the refugee in the early life writing of Ocean Vuong. English Studies, 105(7), 1123-1138. https://doi.org/10.1080/0013838X.2024.2417490
Hong, M.-L. K. (2016). Reframing the archive: Vietnamese refugee narratives in the post-9/11 period. MELUS, 41(3), 18–41. https://doi.org/10.1093/melus/mlw021
Hven, S. (2022). Narrative spaces and sonic environments. In Enacting the worlds of cinema. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197555101.003.0006
Ihde, D. (2007). Listening and voice: Phenomenologies of sound (2nd ed.). State University of New York Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.18254008
Kahn, D. (2016). Sound leads elsewhere. In M. Cobussen, V. Meelberg & B. Truax (Eds.), The Routledge companion to sounding art (pp. 41–50). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315770567
LaBelle, B. (2018). Sonic agency: Sound and emergent forms of resistance (1st ed.). Goldsmiths Press. https://brandonlabelle.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/LaBelle_Sonic_Agency.pdf
Librandi, M. (2018). Writing by ear: Clarice Lispector and the aural novel (1st ed.). University of Toronto Press. https://doi.org/10.3138/9781487514730
Malleret, L. (2025). Những tập quán và tinh thần của một dân tộc. Nhiều tác giả (Eds.), Việt Nam: những tiếng vọng từ quá khứ. Nhà xuất bản Thế giới. [The customs and spirit of a nation. In Vietnam: Echoes from the past. (M. Thu, Trans.) (pp. 201–220). The Gioi Publishers]. https://shop.alphabooks.vn/viet-nam-nhung-tieng-vong-tu-qua-khu-p39108494.html
Marazzi, A. (2019). Aural Anthropology, a Way of Listening. Visual Anthropology, 32(2), 193–204. https://doi.org/10.1080/08949468.2019.1603037
Moten, F. (2003). In the break: The aesthetics of the black radical tradition (1st ed.). University of Minnesota Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.cttts6jk
Neumann, B. (2020). “Our mother tongue, then, is no mother at all – but an orphan”: The mother tongue and translation in Ocean Vuong’s On earth we’re briefly gorgeous. Anglia, 138(2), 277-298. https://doi.org/10.1515/ang-2020-0023
Nguyen, V. T. (2025). To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other. Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.23212013
Ostler, N. (2011). Empires of the Word. HarperCollins. https://www.perlego.com/book/586985/empires-of-the-word-pdf
Papaeti, A. (2023). The songs of fire (1975): Sonic narratives of resistance and collective memory. Twentieth-Century Music, 20(1), 6–22. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1478572222000482.
Robinson, D. (2020). Hungry listening: Resonant theory for indigenous sound studies (1st ed.). University of Minnesota Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctvzpv6bb
Rody, C. (2018). Between “I” and “We”: Viet Thanh Nguyen’s interethnic multitudes. PMLA, 133(2), 396–405. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45179392
Salomé, V. (2006). Sonic memory material as ‘pathetic trigger’. Organised Sound, 11(1), 13-18. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1355771806000033
Schafer, R. M. (1977). The soundscape: Our sonic environment and the tuning of the world. Destiny Books. https://monoskop.org/images/d/d4/Schafer_R_Murray_The_Soundscape_Our_Sonic_Environment_and_the_Tuning_of_the_World_1994.pdf
Schacter, D. L. (1996). Searching for memory: The brain, the mind, and the past (1st ed.). Basic Books. https://dschacter.scholars.harvard.edu/publications/searching-memory-brain-mind-and-past
Seán, S. (2015). The memory of sound: Preserving the sonic past. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315883045
Stadler, G. (2010). Introduction: Breaking sound barriers. Social Text, 28(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-2009-057
Stein, J. A. (2013). American literary history and queer temporalities. American Literary History, 25(4), 855–869. https://doi.org/10.1093/alh/ajt043
Sterne, J. (2003). The audible past: Cultural origins of sound reproduction (1st ed.). Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11hpj6z
Sterne, J. (2012). Sonic imaginations. In J. Sterne (Ed.), The sound studies reader (pp. 1–17). Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/The-Sound-Studies-Reader/Sterne/p/book/9780415771313
Stoever-Ackerman, J. (2010). Splicing the sonic color-line: Tony Schwartz remixes postwar Nueva York. Social Text, 28(1), 59–85. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-2009-060
Stoever, L. J. (2016). The sonic color line: Race and the cultural politics of listening. New York University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1bj4s55
Suppes, P. (2009). Rhythm and meaning in poetry. Midwest studies in Philosophy, XXXIII, 159-166. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4975.2009.00188.x
Thompson, E. (2002). The soundscape of modernity: architectural acoustics and the culture of listening in America, 1900-1933. The MIT Press. https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262701068/the-soundscape-of-modernity/
Trinh T. M-h. (2010). Elsewhere, within here: Immigration, refugeeism and the boundary event (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203847657
Vuong, O. (2022a, February 17). A “love letter” for our community. Thích Nhất Hạnh Foundation. https://thichnhathanhfoundation.org/blog/2022/2/17/a-love-letter-for-our-community-by-ocean-vuong
Vuong, O. (2022b, December 20). From the Archive: The weight of our living on hope, fire escapes, and visible desperation. The Rumpus. https://therumpus.net/2022/12/20/the-weight-of-our-living-on-hope-fire-escapes-and-visible-desperation/
Vuong, O. (2024). Một thoáng ta rực rỡ ở nhân gian. Nhà xuất bản Hội Nhà văn. [On earth we're briefly gorgeous. (K. Nguyên, Trans.). Vietnamese Writer’s Association Publishing House]. (Original work published 2021). https://nhanam.vn/mot-thoang-ta-ruc-ro-o-nhan-gian-tb-2026
Weitzel, M. D. (2018). Audializing migrant bodies: Sound and security at the border. Security Dialogue, 49(6), 421–437. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26979672
Zhu, J. (2024). For the ‘briefly gorgeous’ moment: Imagism and queer aesthetics in Ocean Vuong’s On earth we’re briefly gorgeous. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 67(1), 12–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2024.2421324