Listened to the audio book version of this, and yet again I am amazed at the capacity that Ocean Vuong has to write. Incredible. There were some story contents that were disturbing and honestly hard to listen to, but that is part of Ocean's story, his moms story, and his grandmothers story. And I know I don't have to like what happened, but to be able to empathize, listen, and understand the significance of it is what's important.

At first I was listening and reading the physical book at the same time, but then I switched to just listening so I only wrote down one quote in the beginning which stuck with me: "Because freedom, I am told, is nothing but the distance between the hunter and its prey." (Page 4, hardback version)

And: "I am thinking of beauty again, how some things are hunted because we deemed them beautiful. If, relative to the history of our planet, an individual life is so short, a blink of an eye, as they say, then to be gorgeous, even from the day you're born to the day you die, is to be gorgeous only briefly. Like right now, how to the sun is coming on, low behind the elms, and I can't tell the difference between a sunset and a sunrise. The world, reddening, appears the same to me - and I lose track of east and west. The colors of this morning have the frayed tint of something already leaving." (Page 238, hardback version)