The metaphors that Vuong uses throughout his novel are incredibly deep and moving. He combines the languages of trauma with his challenge of the fluidity of identity rather thoroughly and he does this in a sort of prose-constructed poetic style. While the novel seems to be written purely as prose, I do read the text as poetic form, particularly since the main character, Little Dog, references, re-references, and re-re-references events that have happened twenty pages ago or events that he hasn't even told us.

The relationship between Little Dog and his mother, Trevor, and grandmother, are incredibly fraught and the text confronts his own issues with internalized homophobia (through the use of the f-word) as well as internalized racism.