This article examines the representations of positionality in Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. Published in 2019, Vuong centers his narrative around the narrator, Little Dog—a queer Vietnamese American refugee struggling not only to understand his mother’s and his family’s traumas from war, displacement, and abuse, but also contending with his own path as a queer person of color and as a writer hindered by the inadequacy of language to adequately reflect his thoughts and emotions. While On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous undoubtedly challenges readers to examine individual responses to trauma, displacement, and loss, the text’s conclusion ultimately emphasizes that the characters’ struggles do not define them—instead their abilities to find comfort and understanding in each other afford them paths toward long-term healing. Accordingly, by employing lenses offered by trauma studies, queer theory, and refugee studies, I argue that Little Dog’s narrative illuminates both the obstacles presented by his myriad positionalities, as well as the ways that we might read his and his family’s refugee narrative through a more redemptive and transformative perspective.