by Ocean Vuong
First published 2022
A son cradles his mother's body as she slips away. In the aftermath, he must reconcile her memory with the realities of her life. Vuong's lyrical, visceral verses capture the weight of loss and the fleeting beauty of the everyday. This is a story of what survives the people we've loved and lost. Through raw, elegiac poetry, the narrator grapples with his mother's illness, their shared traumas, and the fading boundaries between their lives.
Genres: literary-fiction, contemporary, adult-fiction, poetry, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, lyrical
Tropes: grief, memory
Period: 21st-century
128 pages · Paperback · Penguin Books
Content warnings: death, terminal-illness