On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

"Sometimes you are erased before you are given the choice of stating who you are.""Because the sunset, like survival, exists only on the verge of its own disappearing. To be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted."真实得宛如切肤之痛。08-24

"All this time I told myself we were born from war-but I was wrong Ma. We were born from beauty. Let no one mistake us for the fruit of violence-but that the violence, having passed through the fruit, failed to spoil it." A work of autofiction and an epistolary novel by a Vietnamese American queer poet: traumatic and painfully beautiful.06-12

Maybe we look into mirrors not merely to seek beauty, regardless how illusive, but to make sure, despite the facts, that we are still here. That the hunted body we move in has not yet been annihilated, scraped out. To see yourself still yourself is a refuge men who have not been denied cannot know.08-28

整本书里最喜欢的是那几页诗（想起了anne carson的autobiography of red08-03

this is depressingly good01-04

我不是很喜欢这种意识流没有故事的叙事。02-11

19年夏天年开始读他的书，恰巧几乎是哥大autobiography的最后一节课，一个年轻的法国作家和我们聊天交流。他说有一个越南裔美国人也在写类似的东西，以letter的形式。恰巧那时候看了the new yorker的一篇报道，刚刚开始读这本书。我接下茬儿，说叫ocean什么吧，在umass amherst做住校写作顺便教literature, 他说是啊是啊。突然想到northampton的咖啡馆们，也许会在某一个傍晚偶遇。07-04

“A page, turning, is a wing lifted with no twin, and therefore no flight. And yet we are moved.” 09-10

写法还是非虚构和诗的写法，出版社强扭成小说推销，读起来反倒有违和感。我对用美的语言描述暴力仍然持一定保留态度，就像阿多诺说，奥斯维辛之后，写诗是野蛮的。08-19

那些依然羞於向你坦白的事，也只能用你看不懂的語言寫出來了。08-21