Due to historical persecution of queer individuals, trauma pervades queer lives, communities, and literary representation. Given the prevalence of trauma in queer narratives,  can queer protagonists define themselves beyond the atrocities they face? In his epistolary novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019), Ocean Vuong demonstrates that while trauma fundamentally shapes the queer Vietnamese American protagonist, Little Dog, he is equally defined by his response. Growing up in 1980s America, Little Dog endures both the intergenerational trauma within his immigrant household while navigating through white American heteronormativity during his youth. In this article, I will focus on a passage in which Little Dog often reflects on his childhood trauma while pondering the nature of monstrosity. Through the symbol of the monster, Little Dog questions whether his identity and future are inextricably intertwined with his trauma. When Little Dog ultimately recognizes monstrosity within himself and his family, he acknowledges how trauma influences but does not predetermine his actions or relationships with others. Thus, I argue that Vuong utilizes the symbol of the monster to demonstrate Little Dog’s adaptation to his queer and immigrant trauma.

In Out Here and Over There: Queerness and Diaspora in Asian American Studies (1997), David Eng argues that “traumatic displacement” allows the queer Asian diasporic subject to challenge present notions of home rooted in heteropatriarchy and colonialism^[1]. Eng’s “traumatic displacement”^[2] is central throughout Little Dog’s childhood as he struggles to find a sense of safety or belonging. At home, Little Dog faces his mother’s physical abuse and his family’s Vietnam War trauma. At school he endures alienation and discrimination from his classmates due to his queerness. Drawing on Eng’s scholarship, I argue that Little Dog’s displacement as a queer, second generation immigrant forces him to redefine his notion of home to account for his trauma. As Little Dog acknowledges but does not reject the monster within himself and his family, Vuong challenges heteropatriarchal and colonialist definitions of family, home, and safety. Finally, I have chosen to focus on the monster symbol due to its existence outside normative and marginalizing structures. According to Mel Chen’s work Animacies (2012), nonhuman representations, such as monsters, move beyond the human and animal binary and challenge current Western systems of power that define humanness^[3]. Chen argues that the nonhuman reconstructs notions of identity and community beyond these exclusionary definitions of human^[4]. Through Chen’s theory, I will illustrate how Vuong’s portrayal of the monster not only interrogates the dehumanization of the queer Vietnamese American protagonist but also redefines humanness to include his identities.

Finally, when analyzing the nature of the monster symbol, as neither human nor animal, I will draw on foundational Asian American scholar Lisa Lowe and her theory of hybridity. Lowe explains that as Asian Americans navigate and survive these dominant structures, they adopt multiple and hybrid identities^[5]. I will utilize Lowe’s theory to illustrate that as Little Dog confronts multiple layers of grief as a queer Vietnamese American immigrant, he gravitates to the hybrid identity of the monster. Lowe emphasizes that hybridity exists as a resistance to binaries which undermine the experiences of the diasporic individual^[6]. Instead, hybridity validates their identity which is spread across different geographies and cultures^[7]. Within the novel, I will argue that the hybridity of the monster illustrates how Little Dog persists against his loss, which is spread across multiple generations of Vietnamese Americans and intersections of his identity.

In several passages throughout the novel, Little Dog reflects on moments from his childhood in which Rose physically abused him. In this article, I will analyze a passage that occurs after Little Dog recounts the final time that Rose physically abused him which ends after he defended himself.  When reflecting on the incident through a series of letters to his mother, adult Little Dog interrogates the monstrosity within himself and his mother Rose. Little Dog considers whether Rose is a monster within the context of her trauma from the Vietnam War, which she passes down to him through her abuse. Rose’s monstrosity then reminds Little Dog of when his classmates called him homophobic slurs after they saw him wearing Rose’s dress. Thus, Little Dog considers his monstrosity both as the son of a Vietnamese immigrant and as a queer boy growing up in America.

At the beginning of this passage, Rose, unprompted, tells Little Dog, “I’m not a monster. I’m a mother.”^[8] Little Dog recalls how he initially responded to Rose at the time. He also reflects on her abuse as an older narrator who understands how her trauma impacted her motherhood. Little Dog retrospectively describes their interaction in his letter:

Throughout this section Vuong emphasizes the hybridity of the monster to illustrate how due to Rose’s trauma, her motherhood is intertwined with her violence. Vuong outlines how Rose’s traumatic experiences with displacement and discrimination shape her abuse through the hybridity of the monster. Little Dog describes the monster’s duality by stating “To be a monster is to be a hybrid signal, a lighthouse: both shelter and warning at once.”^[9] Through the symbol of the lighthouse, Little Dog depicts Rose’s trauma from displacement and also illustrates how she perpetuates her trauma within her motherhood. Due to the Vietnam War and her subsequent immigration, Rose is forced to reconceptualize home. Like the shelter of a lighthouse, the monster contains some semblance of home. However, the lighthouse also serves as a warning, and the monster is unable to embody home’s sense of security or permanence. Rose’s conception of home similarly lacks security or permanence. She was not able to maintain a sense of safety in Vietnam due to the dangers of war. In order to survive the war, Rose is forced to prioritize shelter over the country and community she was born into by immigrating to America. She also experiences racism and discrimination in America that further reduces her sense of security. Despite the unfamiliarity and discomfort, Rose learns to settle and find shelter within America in order to survive. Consequently, trauma also shapes her motherhood as, due to her abuse, Rose is unable to embody a sense of home for Little Dog that contains consistent safety. By comparing Rose to a monster and a lighthouse, Little Dog perceives her as a home that lacks safety or permanence. Like the lighthouse, Rose evokes both comfort and harm within Little Dog. Thus, through her abuse, she passes on a concept of home to Little Dog that is intertwined with the sensations of fear and violence that she experienced.

Through the monster’s hybridity, Vuong also depicts how Rose’s experiences of alienation and discrimination also shape her motherhood. As Little Dog considers whether Rose is a monster, he details the linguistic transformation of the word over time revealing that monster was “adapted by the Old French to mean an animal of myriad origins: centaur, griffin, satyr.”^[10] By investigating the linguistic origins of the word monster, Little Dog distances the monster from its colloquial connotation as inherently cruel. As Little Dog compares Rose’s identity with these fantastical creatures, Vuong demonstrates that she is not cruel by nature but demonized for her otherness and potentially becomes cruel as a consequence. Through the monster’s “myriad origins,”^[11] Vuong reflects Rose’s mixed identity and the trauma she experienced as a result. Rose is biracial; she has a white American soldier father and a Vietnamese mother. In addition to the discrimination she faces in America as an adult, Rose's mixed identity caused her to experience verbal abuse and alienation from other Vietnamese children when she was growing up. Her multiple origins made her monstrous in the eyes of her peers. After immigrating to America, Rose continues to navigate her biracial identity when interacting with Vietnamese and white American communities. Rose cannot comfortably settle into either her Vietnamese or American identity, like the monster her origins continue to be liminal. Thus, Rose’s sense of home lacks security and permanence. Due to her position as a biracial Vietnamese immigrant living in America, she is denied a sense of belonging within her current country of residence. Therefore, through the monster, Little Dog depicts his mother’s abuse as a product of her displacement and alienation. As a sympathetic son, Little Dog portrays Rose as a victim within larger structures of colonial violence. However, he still acknowledges that her abusive response to this trauma makes her cruel. By positioning Rose as both a victim and a perpetuator of violence, Vuong introduces the ethical complexities of intergenerational trauma and abuse within an immigrant household. Thus, the monster depicts Rose’s violent motherhood as a response to the trauma of colonialism and war.

Vuong then explicitly depicts Rose’s physical abuse as a response to her war trauma, when Little Dog names Rose’s violence as a product of her post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD). Little Dog explains his mother’s abuse by reflecting, “I read that parents suffering from PTSD are more likely to hit their children. Perhaps there is a monstrous origin to it, after all. Perhaps to lay hands on your child is to prepare him for war.”^[12] Through this statement, the novel frames Little Dog’s experience with abuse within the larger historical brutalization of racialized bodies originating from war and colonialism. Despite the end of the Vietnam War, Rose’s PTSD is apparent when she acts as if she is currently still facing the dangers of war. She maintains a survival mentality while she raises Little Dog. Even when she has immigrated away from the place of violence, she believes that war is still present or will come again. She does not feel a sense of permanent security. By abusing Little Dog, Rose reenacts her memories of wartime physical pain and fear onto him. Through her violence, Rose’s past seeps into her present relationship with Little Dog and shapes her role as a mother. Quan Manh Ha and Mia Tompkins identify the intergenerational trauma within Little Dog’s family by observing that “Little Dog did not live the war as Rose and Lan^[13] did, but he does witness their violent outbursts, flashbacks, and nightmares. He observes how trauma distorts the boundaries of space and time.”^[14] Finally, Little Dog perceives his mother’s violence as a perverse attempt to care for and protect her child by preparing him for future dangers. Through Rose’s misguided attempts at mothering Little Dog, Vuong illustrates how trauma can shape the Asian American subject's parenting and produce intergenerational trauma. Thus, Vuong contextualizes Rose’s abuse within the immigrant household by portraying both her and Little Dog as victims of larger systems of violence.

Little Dog further depicts his mother’s abuse as a product of her trauma by challenging the definition of monster. Little Dog expands on the morally complex nature of intergenerational trauma within his family by revealing, “From the Latin root monstrum, [the monster is] a divine messenger of catastrophe.”^[15] By interrogating the linguistic origins of the word monster, Little Dog once again distances the monster from its colloquial connotations as inherently cruel or evil. When considering the monstrosity within his mother, Little Dog characterizes the monster through the neutral role of a messenger. As a messenger, Rose delivers catastrophe through her abuse but is not the origin of it. Within the novel Rose passes the trauma of war to her son through her abuse. As the messenger, Rose is not portrayed as the origin of trauma but a perpetuator of it. Rose’s violence originates from her own experiences with historical colonialist violence, in an effort to adapt, she allows this violence to seep into her role as a mother and manifest as abuse. Through Rose’s characterization, Vuong depicts Rose as one of many Vietnamese Americans who pass on the catastrophe of war as they immigrate and become parents.

Little Dog continues to contextualize his mother’s abuse and portray Rose as morally ambiguous through the monster’s divinity. By describing the monster’s Latin root as “divine messenger,”^[16] Little Dog perceives the creature as nonhuman in a godly sense. He suggests that the monster and his mother were originally beings of purest innocence forced to pass on catastrophe. Vuong’s morally nuanced representation of the monster further outlines the ethical complexities of intergenerational trauma and portrays Rose as more than a villain. By describing the Latin origins of the word monster within the context of the Vietnam War, Little Dog also interrogates the colonial origins of trauma within his family that were passed down to him. Little Dog does not absolve Rose of her abuse but acknowledges the violent origins of her trauma. Therefore, through his complex depiction of the monster, Little Dog acknowledges her abuse as a response to her trauma while still holding her accountable to her violence.

Finally, as Little Dog deconstructs the monster in order to protect Rose, Vuong illustrates that despite her monstrosity he still perceives her as a mother. In the moment, Little Dog verbally agreed with his mother and reassured her that she is not a monster. Retrospectively, he expresses his true perception of Rose's monstrosity in his letter to her when he confesses, “I lied. What I really wanted to say was that a monster is not such a terrible thing to be.”^[17] Despite being a victim of her abuse, Little Dog’s first response is to protect Rose from acknowledging the monstrosity of her violence. He attempts to shield her from the negative emotions that she could experience as a result of confronting her actions. Through Little Dog’s care for Rose, Vuong illustrates that attachment and a sense of family can still exist within a relationship shaped by abuse. Little Dog still expresses the loyalty of a child attached to a parent. When he recognizes his mother as a monster, he does so by questioning whether a monster is truly terrible thus sympathizing with her. He emphasizes that Rose’s abuse does not make her inherently evil or cruel, nor does it make her less of a mother. However, through his retrospective narration, he acknowledges she has still committed violent actions that do make her monstrous. Vuong illustrates that Rose’s motherhood is inherently intertwined with violence and shaped by that due to her trauma from colonial violence and displacement.

The Monster and Little Dog’s Response to Queer Trauma

While considering the monstrosity within his mother, Little Dog is then reminded of a time during his childhood when Rose picks out a dress at Goodwill. She asks him if the tag indicates that the dress is fireproof, he lies and reassures her that it is. Days later, Little Dog wears her dress in the front yards and is consequently called homophobic slurs by his classmates at school. This section of the passage illustrates how Little Dog’s inherited trauma as a second-generation Vietnamese American frames his trauma as a queer boy growing up in America. Little Dog recounts the memory:

What I do know is that back at Goodwill you handed me the white dress, your eyes glazed and wide. “Can you read this,” you said, “and tell me if it’s fireproof?” I searched the hem, studied the print on the tag, and, not yet able to read myself, said, “Yeah.” Said it anyway. “Yeah,” I lied, holding the dress up to your chin. “It’s fireproof.”

Days later, a neighborhood boy, riding by on his bike, would see me wearing that very dress—I had put it on thinking I would look more like you—in the front yard while you were at work. At recess the next day, the kids would call me freak, fairy, fag. I would learn, much later, that those words were also iterations of monster. (Vuong 13-14)

As Little Dog explains to Rose that he wore her ‘fireproof’ dress in hopes of physically resembling her more, Vuong reinforces how trauma shapes their relationship. When Little Dog explains to Rose,  “I had put it on thinking I would look more like you” ^[18] he expresses a natural childlike sense of admiration for her, through his attempt to copy her. Despite Rose’s abuse, there are aspects of her which Little Dog’s younger self wanted to learn and emulate. Furthermore, the dress represents a moment of vulnerability for Rose. She remembers how Vietnamese villages and their inhabitants were burned to the ground by American soldiers during the war. As Rose chooses her clothes based on her fear of fire, Vuong illustrates how her trauma continues to influence her decisions in America. Through Rose’s choice, Little Dog learns from her that clothing, a mode of self-expression, can be intertwined with trauma and survival. As Little Dog wears his mother’s clothing and embodies her, he attempts to connect more deeply with her, suggesting a desire to understand the traumatic origins of abuse and violence within their relationship. By inhabiting the dress, Little Dog tries to process the sensations of fear and danger that he inherited from her. Little Dog’s desire for femininity and his self-exploration is intertwined with his desire to understand Rose. Vuong illustrates how Little Dog’s inherited trauma does not negate his identity as Rose’s son; however, it shapes how he relates to her as he constructs his own identity in response to the trauma that she passed down to him.

However, as Little Dog’s attempt to look more like his mother, the femininity of this action causes him to be ostracized by his classmates for his perceived queerness. He recalls that the consequence of wearing Rose’s dress was, “at recess the next day, the kids would call me freak, fairy, fag.”^[19] As Little Dog embodies Rose through the dress, he is subject to discrimination and verbal abuse. Like the hybridity within Rose’s identity, Little Dog’s queerness positions him between the world of the American schoolyard and his Vietnamese American family, both of which he does not truly feel safe in. His trauma from both his queer and Vietnamese American identity also causes him to resemble the hybridity of the monster. By connecting the monster to Little Dog’s queerness, Vuong illustrates that this symbol encapsulates Little Dog’s intersectionality by representing both his queer and Vietnamese American identities. Vuong thus depicts the trauma within the queer Vietnamese American experience as a twofold marginalization that reinforces Little Dog’s identification with the nonhuman.

However, as Little Dog recognizes the monstrosity within himself through these homophobic slurs, similar to Rose, he also acknowledges the systems of heteropatriarchy which make him monstrous. Vuong illustrates how Little Dog’s monstrosity shapes his queer identity and exists as an adaptation to homophobia. He retrospectively reflects on the slurs his classmates used stating,  “I would learn, much later, that those words were also iterations of monster.”^[20]  Similar to when he deconstructed the linguistic origins of the word monster, Little Dog distances the slurs from their homophobic history and demonized connotation by emphasizing that he did not fully understand their meaning at the time. The fact that only later in his life did Little Dog learn the monstrosity of these words suggests that those words are made monstrous by their social context. While the words did not initially carry their discriminatory connotation or history to Little Dog at the time, their delivery contained a sense of violence. Vuong illustrates the impact and harm of the words on Little Dog, as he continued to remember them much later and place them within a social context. Vuong reinforces the violence within these words as through the alliteration of the “f” sound, the words still contained a harshness when articulated by his classmates. Thus, Vuong reinforces that his classmates' words are also not inherently hurtful but become so through their tone and intention to discriminate. Finally, without their social context, the words “freak, fairy, fag”^[21] contain multiple meanings that have changed over time. Like the monster, the words initially contain ambiguous meanings, their intention and context making them cruel. Therefore, just like his mother, Little Dog does not perceive his monstrosity as inherently evil. Instead, societal perceptions and structures of heteropatriarchy characterize him as such. Thus, Little Dog identifies with the monster in order to comprehend and adapt to homophobia.

Throughout this passage, Little Dog explores the origins of the word monster to determine whether his mother is one, as an abuser who is also traumatized by the war. Through the hybridity of the monster as both a shelter and warning, Vuong illustrates how intergenerational trauma complicates Little Dog’s relationship with his mother, which contains both care and abuse. Little Dog’s emphasis on the monster’s hybridity builds towards his eventual realization at the end of the passage in which he concludes, “You’re a mother, Ma. You’re also a monster. But so am I—which is why I can’t turn away from you.”^[22] Vuong asserts that both motherhood and monstrosity exist within Rose. Her trauma does not stop her from being a mother; however, it does shape her motherhood. There are no conjunctions between Little Dog’s two statements, reinforcing the hybrid existence of both her motherhood and monstrosity. Rose’s tendency to abuse can be seen as a misguided attempt to mother her son. However, the consequence of her violent actions makes her a monster. The trauma within Rose’s life that compels her to abuse and to act monstrous is passed down to her son, and thus Little Dog recognizes himself as a monster as well. As Little Dog cannot turn away from Rose, Vuong illustrates their resemblance and attachment to one another as trauma-bonded individuals. Therefore, Vuong illustrates how Rose’s adaptation to trauma will continue to live on through Little Dog.

Through the representation of the monster, Vuong illustrates that even once the marginalized subject leaves their place of trauma, their memories of violence and fear continue to manifest within their new way of life. The hybridity of the monster conveys how trauma exists within Asian American and queer ways of life and relationships. Finally, Vuong emphasizes the hybridity of queer and Vietnamese American as Little Dog can only comprehend his and Rose’s adaptation through an imaginary creature, the monster. Vuong reinforces queer theorist José Esteban Muñoz’ argument that marginalized subjects can redirect their loss to imagine alternative forms of community and home that validate their identity.^[23] Little Dog’s trauma does not cause him to abandon familial relationships or his sense of self. Instead, his trauma causes him to adopt alternative perceptions of himself and his familial role. He perceives himself not simply as a subject of oppression but a traumatized individual that lives within a postcolonial and heteropatriarchal society. Thus, the hybridity of the monster is used to validate the identity of the marginalized subject and challenge the current oppressive structures that do not recognize their multiplicity. While Little Dog and his mother continue to experience marginalization, through the imagined hybridity of the monster, Little Dog conceptualizes their ability to adapt. Therefore, Vuong not only presents the monster as Little Dog’s adaptation to his queer and Vietnamese American identity, the hybridity of the monster also represents Little Dog’s desire to move beyond trauma.

By defining the monster as an adaptation, this article presents Little Dog’s queer and racial trauma as forces that do not inhibit his way of life but fundamentally shape it. Little Dog emphasizes the adaptive hybridity of the monster, as both harmful and comforting to him. Simultaneously, Vuong illustrates the pain and empowerment that comes with Little Dog’s adaptation to trauma, represented in the monster. Through the monster’s hybridity, Vuong complicates the impact of trauma on the queer Vietnamese American subject, reinforcing David Eng’s argument that traumatic displacement continues to shape the marginalized individual’s life, instead of hindering their ability to mentally progress through life.

By focusing on the intersection of queer and Asian American identity throughout this article, I aim to confront the overrepresentation of Eurocentric whiteness within queer literary representation and discourse. Through my analysis of the monster, a symbol that challenges current structures of power, this article aligns with Dennis Altman’s argument that, however differently articulated, queer identities exist beyond the Western world.^[24] Through the nonhuman, I analyze how Vuong’s representation of queer Asian American identity moves beyond Western definitions of humanity. My analysis of Vuong’s novel aims to validate and present a nuanced experience of the diasporic queer subject. Finally, by emphasizing the monster as a representation of Little Dog’s adaptation to queer Asian American marginalization, I argue that intersectionality is imperative in efforts towards liberation from systems of oppression.