Foot and Fire

On Earth, We're Briefly Gorgeous  by Ocean Vuong Paperback, 196 pages This is the first novel of the contemporary American Poet Ocean Vuong which tells of a story of writer Little Dog through letters addressed to her mother who is illiterate. This may be a novel but it's fifty percent autobiographical. Some nonfictional portions are the fact that Vuong's mother worked as a manicurist and he also became a writer and that they are Vietnamese immigrants and lived in Hartford, Connecticut. He's also a queer.    The story is told in an epistolary form but in a non-linear manner. It is about struggles of being a child of Vietnam war who immigrated to the US with his grandmother and mother, who grows up to be a queer, who had a relationship with an all-American boy who is an addict.       The story may be about the coming-of-age of a Vietnamese immigrant in the US seeking to fit and thrive and survive in the land of milk and honey but in the end, it i...

I blogged in the past that I finished reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn in my ipad after about two years. Actually, I had been keeping a hardbound of it even before I started the ebook in my ipad.  Earlier, I am about to stow the book in my wall bookshelf (read, far from my bedroom shelf which has the to-read stacks) because I finished it already.  But I skimmed and found the Afterword. Author Betty Smith who wrote this semi-autobiographical novel gave us Francie, a vivid recaller of all things past, a vivid describer of all things around, a vivid feeler of emotions around. I recalled that I can't finish this book in one sitting because it has full of vivid imagery of Francie's childhood, details from headlice to games she enjoys. As I progressed reading halfway, she also grows up and experiences new things. This afterword by Alfred Kazin in 1989 struck me and I don't want tp forget this. "For fullest appreciation, it probably helps t...

The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger  I have been meaning to read this for a long time but I got into the mood only lately after I finished A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and The Great Gatsby, both American Classics. Well, I understood why this book was banned at some point in the history. The theme is about the coming-of-age of a boy of 16. The swearing, the colloquials, the immaturity of Holden Caulfield versus his aim to become a responsible respectable adult versus his observation on phony adults and adult world. He is conflicted into rushing to experience the adult world by his entering clubs, trying to hire a prostituted woman, having mature conversations but always failing to do so.  You will ignore the swearing and admire his thoughts on phony world of adult men and also admire his assessment as he can become a conscientious adult later on. The teenage angst and rants are part of a phase and will  eventually be overcome by teenagers.This is evident when Holden decided t...