Children’s & Middle Grade

Vietnamese Children’s Favorite Stories – Trần Thị Minh Phước, illustrated by Nguyễn Thị Hợp & Nguyễn Đồng
The tales chosen for this book share the Vietnamese five great virtues: Nhan (Compassion), Le (Rituals), Nghia (Righteousness), Tri (Wisdom), and Tin (Trust). The adapter notes that her parents used traditional stories to teach children values and morals.

My Footprints – Bao Phi, illustrated by Basia Tran
Every child feels different in some way, but Thuy feels "double different." She is Vietnamese American and she has two moms.

Chicken of the Sea – Viet Thanh Nguyen & Ellison Nguyen, illustrated by Thi Bui & Hien Bui-Stafford

A band of intrepid chickens leave behind the boredom of farm life, joining the crew of the pirate ship Pitiless to seek fortune and glory on the high seas.

Simone – Viet Thanh Nguyen, illustrated by Minnie Phan
When Simone is awakened by her mom as a wildfire threatens their home, it is the beginning of a life-changing journey.

My Ong Ngoai's Garden: Cal’s Guide to Vietnamese Fruits and Culture – Ann Chau, illustrated by QBN Studios
Follow Cal as he explores his grandpa’s garden and learns about delicious fruits commonly found in Vietnam.

An Asian American A to Z: A Children’s Guide to Our History – Cathy Linh Che & Kyle Lucia Wu, illustrated by Kavita Ramchandran

A comprehensive and spirited exploration of Asian American history—its movements, cultures, and key figures—beautifully illustrated and compellingly told for readers of all ages.

The Vietnamese Children's Songbook: Songs and Cultural Treasures – Tina Huynh, illustrated by Jessica Dinh
A collection of nine songs and Mid-Autumn Harvest Moon Festival activities for children aged 3–10 years.

Mai's Áo Dài – Thai Nguyen & Monique Truong, illustrated by Dung Ho
It’s the morning of Tet, and Mai is excited to celebrate at her grandmother’s home. She wants to wear a sparkly Cinderella dress, but her father suggests an áo dài, a traditional Vietnamese outfit, leaving Mai disappointed.

Girl Giant and the Monkey King – Van Hoang
Eleven-year-old Thom Ngho is keeping a secret: she’s strong. Like suuuuper strong. Freakishly strong. And it’s making it impossible for her to fit in at her new middle school.

Young Adult

Green Lantern: Legacy – Minh Le, illustrated by Andie Tong
Thirteen-year-old Tai Pham lives in the apartment above his grandmother's store, where his bedroom is crammed with sketchpads and comic books. But not even his most imaginative drawings could compare to the colorful adventure he's about to embark on.

Family Style: Memories of an American from Vietnam – Thien Pham
Behind every cut of steak and inside every croissant lies a story. And for Thien Pham, that story is about a search―for belonging, for happiness, for the American dream.

Gloria Buenrostro Is Not My Girlfriend – Brandon Hoàng
Gary Võ is one of the few Vietnamese kids in his school and has been shy for as long as he can remember―being ignored and excluded by his classmates comes with the territory. So when the most popular guy in his grade offers Gary the opportunity to break into his inner circle, Gary jumps at the chance. All he needs to do is steal the prized possession of the most beautiful and untouchable girl they know―Gloria Buenrostro.

A Clash of Steel: A Treasure Island Remix (Remixed Classics, 1) – C. B. Lee
1826. The sun is setting on the golden age of piracy, and the legendary Dragon Fleet, the scourge of the South China Sea, is no more. Its ruthless leader, a woman known only as the Head of the Dragon, is now only a story, like the ones Xiang has grown up with all her life. She desperately wants to prove her worth, especially to her mother, a shrewd businesswoman who never seems to have enough time for Xiang.

A Banh Mi for Two – Trinity Nguyen
In this sweet sapphic romance about two foodies in love, Vivi meets Lan while studying abroad in Vietnam and they spend the semester unraveling their families' histories—and eating all the street food in Sài Gòn.

Fiction — Adult & Literary

The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) – Viet Thanh Nguyen
Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize, a startling debut novel from a powerful new voice featuring one of the most remarkable narrators of recent fiction: a conflicted subversive and idealist working as a double agent in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

Monkey Bridge: A Novel – Lan Cao
Like navigating a monkey bridge—a bridge, built of spindly bamboo, used by peasants for centuries—the narrative traverses perilously between worlds past and present, East and West, in telling two interlocking stories: one, the Vietnamese version of the classic immigrant experience in America, told by a young girl; and the second, a dark tale of betrayal, political intrigue, family secrets, and revenge—her mother's tale.

The Girl Before Her – Line Papin (Author), Adriana Hunter (Translator)
A coming-of-age tale of dislocation and inherited trauma from the acclaimed young French Vietnamese novelist.

The Veil Between Two Worlds: A Memoir of Silence, Loss, and Finding Home – Christina Vo
Christina Vo has always struggled with the concept of “home.” The daughter of an emotionally distant father and a mother who died when she was just fourteen, she continues to grapple with that legacy of loss and her constant quest to, as a fortysomething, find a reconciliation with the shape her life has taken.

Nothing Follows (Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network Series) – Lan P. Duong
The title of this debut collection, Nothing Follows, is reappropriated from a government document establishing the beginning of a refugee family’s time in the United States. At every coordinate of their lives, the refugee family provides affidavits, letters, and reams of paperwork as they work to beseech those in power to grant them “family reunification” visas for those they had to leave behind in 1975 after the fall of Saigon.

The Fortunes of Jaded Women: A Novel – Carolyn Huynh
For fans of Amy Tan, KJ Dell’Antonia, and Kevin Kwan, this “sharp, smart, and gloriously extra” (Nancy Jooyoun Kim, author of The Last Story of Mina Lee) debut celebrates a family of estranged Vietnamese women who experiences mishaps and unexpected joy after a psychic makes a startling prediction about their lives.

Stories from the Edge of the Sea – Andrew Lam
At times humorous and ecstatic, other times poetic and elegiac, the fourteen pieces in Stories from the Edge of the Sea explore love and loss, lust and grief, longing and heartbreaks through the lives of Vietnamese immigrants and their children in California.

Beyond Borders: Stories from The Vietnamese Diaspora — written in Vietnamese by well-known diasporic Viet writers and translated for the first time into English
The stories in Beyond Borders are written by mostly first and 1.5 generation Vietnamese refugees, featuring original works written in English or via translation from the Vietnamese. Wide-ranging yet unique in its scope, Beyond Borders acknowledges intergenerational trauma, explores queer desire, illustrates coping behavior of elderly characters who lose both their collective and personal memory, and revels in aesthetic expressions professed by rebellious exiles.

Lối Về Của Nước — Tri C. Tran, PhD
Lối về của nước là một tập truyện & kịch có những nét đặc biệt. Nó viết về Con Người, về Ngôn Ngữ, về Hiện-hữu-người, Thể-tính-người. Nó trình hiện trước mắt người đọc những tương-giao-người giăng mắc, chồng chéo, và đầy phức tạp. Tất cả chập chờn giữa mộng và thực. Mộng và thực gắn bó, trộn lẫn vào nhau. Con người nhìn vào hiện cảnh như nhìn vào một giấc mơ.

Sparrow in the Razor Wire: Finding Freedom from Within While Serving a Life Sentence —  Quan Huynh
Sparrow in the Razor Wire is Quan’s story of transformation inside a place many see as the end of the road. In his book, he shares the journey of redemption and discovery that led to his ultimate freedom. He found that, no matter the prison, the key to unlocking the door is in each one of us.

Ai — Đặng Thơ Thơ
Ai is a novel about the disappearance of the self, of human beings, on the stage of life as a museum. Ai is organically constructed as a fugue about the journey of escape, exile, asylum, and transformation of human beings in modern times.

The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse — Vinh Nguyen
An unconventional memoir of conjuring the uncertain past and a long-lost homeland, and a vital document of one family’s journey through world history With the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, the U.S. war in Vietnam ended, but the refugee crisis was only beginning. Among the millions of people who fled Vietnam by boat were Vinh Nguyen, along with his mother and siblings, and his father, who left separately and then mysteriously vanished.

Family Recipe — Carolyn Huynh
A stunning family dramedy about estranged siblings competing to inherit their father’s Vietnamese sandwich franchise and unravel family mysteries.

Bạch Hóa  — Cung Tích Biền
Việt Nam là một đất nước có một dòng chảy lịch sử, kể từ mùa Thu năm 1945, khá đặc biệt, đầy nghịch cảnh do/từ sự đối kháng giữa hai ý thức hệ chính trị. Cuộc nội chiến phân tranh giữa Miền Bắc và Miền Nam lên đến đỉnh điểm kể từ khi có mặt quân đội Mỹ tham dự trực tiếp vào chiến trường Việt Nam. Từ đó, chiến trường mở rộng.

Poetry & Anthologies

Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry & Prose, 25th Anniversary Edition — Barbara Tran, Monique Truong & Khoi Luu (editors)
Watermark lifts all constraints, leaving the works to reset the boundaries for themselves. And they do—using poetry, fiction, and experimental forms to venture further into the intricacies of the Vietnamese American psyche. A work equal measures foundational and pathbreaking, now available again for a new generation of readers—an essential collection not to be missed.

Incidental Takes — Teresa Mei Chuc
The poems in Incidental Takes by Teresa Mei Chuc are personal and visceral; human and political; haunting and healing. The ebb and flow of the poems in English and Vietnamese translations mimic the movement of water and the interleaving of the poems mimic the oceanic ecosystem.

Vietnamese Stories for Language Learners — Tri C. Tran

Bilingual folktales in Vietnamese & English