A Vietnamese American literature student and writer, Little Dog is the protagonist and narrator of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. The novel is a letter Little Dog writes to his mother, Rose, despite the fact that she will not be able to read it. At the time of writing the letter to Rose, Little Dog writes “I am twenty-eight years old, 5ft 4in tall, 112lbs. I am handsome at exactly three angles and deadly from everywhere else” (10). Little Dog is a gay Vietnamese American former literature student and writer from Hartford, Connecticut. He grew up with his mother and grandmother, Lan, in a rough, mostly Latinx, lower working-class neighborhood. Little Dog is a deeply poetic narrator who views the world in terms of the ability and inability of language to capture the human body and the human experience.

Little Dog’s childhood and adolescence is marked by violence, loss, and self-discovery. He witnesses his father’s arrest for beating his mother, and, in turn, suffers abuse from his mother, who often struck him hard enough to draw blood. As a freshman in high school, Little Dog takes a job as a harvester on Mr. Buford’s tobacco farm. There, he meets Trevor, a troubled, all-American high school junior.