A moment I’m thinking about is when I finished reading my first book for my senior project, and I had to sit down and write a lil “review” type thing about it. I quickly realized I had no idea how to write a book review, and I wasn’t even sure I had read one before. This would be my first learning experience for my senior project.

The book I had read was On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong. The narrator, Little Dog, writes to his illiterate mother as he processes his memories, traumas, and experiences as a Vietnamese immigrant living in Hartford, Connecticut. These memories include the beatings he received from his ill mother, how he was bullied at school, his abusive father, and his relationship with Trevor, a rough, American boy he met working on a tobacco farm the summer he turned fourteen. His relationship with Trevor takes up most of the middle of the novel, and as Little Dog recounts it to his mother, we watch him experience love, loss, and the realization that “…there was something even more brutal and total than work – want.”

Reading the novel and writing about it related to my essential question because it was a part of the publishing process: reviews. Being able to read some and writing one helped me experience something I was excited about. Having done so gave me an additional glimpse into the world of publishing, and I’m excited to continue to do so throughout my Senior Project.