Our guest is poet Ocean Vuong. His debut novel "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous" takes the form of a letter written to the narrator's mother. The details closely mirror Vuong's own life. Vuong was raised by his mother and grandmother in Hartford, Connecticut. Born in Viet Nam, he was two years old when they left a refugee camp in the Philippines to immigrate to the United States. Ocean Vuong came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco on February 3, 2020, to talk with fellow writer Tommy Orange about making art, the power of language, and what it means to be an American.