Quote by Ocean Vuong: “To be an immigrant is to be a verb, not a noun.”

A noun is static — a fixed identity, a label. A verb is action, movement, becoming. This says that being an immigrant is not about what you are but about what you are constantly doing: adapting, crossing, surviving, rebuilding. Identity is not a destination; it is an ongoing act.

Vuong published On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous in 2019 during a period of intense debate in the United States about immigration, borders, and the treatment of refugees. He was writing from personal experience as a refugee from Vietnam, offering an intimate counter-narrative to political rhetoric about immigrants.

Vietnamese-American poet and novelist whose debut poetry collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds won the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2017. His debut novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous explores immigrant identity, queerness, and intergenerational trauma through a letter from a son to his illiterate mother. He teaches at New York University.