Quote by Ocean Vuong: “To be loved is to be seen.”

Being truly loved by someone means that person looks at you — all of you, including the parts you hide — and still chooses to stay. Most of us walk through life partly invisible; love is the act of making someone fully real. Without being seen, love is just proximity.

Vuong published On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous in 2019, a novel written as a letter from a Vietnamese-American son to his illiterate mother. It appeared during a moment of heightened American reckoning with immigration, identity, and the legacy of the Vietnam War on communities that fled it.

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.