One afternoon, while watching TV with Lan, we saw a herd of buffalo run, single file, off a cliff, a whole steaming row of them thundering off the mountain. “Why they die themselves like that?” she asked, mouth open. Like usual, I made something up on the spot: “They don’t mean to, Grandma. They’re just following their family. That’s all. They don’t know it’s a cliff.”
“Maybe they should have a stop sign then.”
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
This quote appears near the end of the book, when Little Dog and Lan are watching television together. It is significant because it introduces Little Dog’s buffalo analogy, which serves as a metaphor for the drug epidemic engulfing American society in the twentieth century. Little Dog juxtaposes the image of hundreds of buffalo running full-bore off the edge of a cliff to certain death with the image of thousands of American succumbing to drug addiction after watching others, in some cases their parents and siblings, die from the very same addiction. According to Little Dog, addicts are drawn in a single, perilous line of follow the leader to the edge of the metaphorical cliff.
Little Dog’s real-life experience with drug addiction is just as vivid as Lan and Little Dog’s “Technicolor” view of the buffalo charging off a cliff. Trevor is among the five friends he loses to drug use, and Kyle and Kevin, two brothers from his neighborhood, pass away five years apart. Lan is shocked that the buffalo voluntarily run off the cliff, but Little Dog maintains that they are simply “following their family,” or the herd, and are unaware of the danger. According to Lan, these situations require stop signs, and Vuong’s book serves as one of them. Through On Earth we’re Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong issues a warning that many Americans are dangerously close to the cliff’s edge when it comes to drugs and the opioid crisis.