Course:A Letter to My Mother That She Will Never Read By Ocean Vuong

CRWR 501P 003
Advanced Writing of Poetry
	Instructor:Dr. Bronwen Tate; Email: Bronwen.tate@ubc.ca; Office: Buchanan E #456;
Important Course Pages
	Inspirations & Influences;
Categories
	Sources of Inspiration and Influence Aardvark Book of Poems Book of Poems by a Living Poet Choufleur Conflicted, Ambivalent, or Antagonistic Feelings CRWR 501 People Encountered Before Twelve Essay Fiction Films Fox Gemini Music Orchid Otis Places Poem Composed Before 1945 Poetic Prose Sadcactussometimesblooms Song, Painting, Film, Etc. Souris Yarrow Yellow Silver

Somehow the original essay does inspire me more than the novel does. The essay is an earlier draft of what later becomes Ocean Vuong's debut novel "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous". The novel is poetry in fiction. Beautiful. Devastating. Poetic. Captivating. Nourishing. It is also, for me as a writer rather daunting. I remember once commenting that if I write something as beautiful as this novel I would probably die happily. It is true. I also say that because I am not sure I ever would.

The essay however is more inspiring. Mainly because it is honest. It does not shroud itself in the protection of fictional narrative. It exposes itself as raw truth. I can imagine writing something like this about my parents while they are alive, but not publish it. I might however publish something like this eventually if I ever out survive them.

I put down the book. The heads of the green beans went on snapping. They thunked in the steel sink like fingers. You’re not a monster, I said.
But I lied.
What I really wanted to say was that a monster is not such a terrible thing to be. From the Latin root monstrum, a divine messenger of catastrophe, then adapted by the Old French to mean an animal of myriad origins: centaur, griffin, satyr. To be a monster is to be a hybrid signal, a lighthouse: both shelter and warning at once.

What Vuong expresses in their essay is the desire for this brutal conversation with their mother that they never had. Perhaps not more brutal that their childhood. Yet I often believe that nothing feels more violent than a mirror. Essays like this are simultaneously reflective and confrontational. It looks at its audience and tell them "hey, you did this!".

I remember reading this meme that said that millennials have invented a new genre of writing that involves parents apologising to their children. This possibly true. There might be a brutal aspect to that. If also necessary. Because maybe the best way to break the trauma cycle is to put it in reverse.