Timber and Lua: Stories

by Lily Hoang, Vi Khi Nao

AWARD-WINNING CO-AUTHORS


PEN OPEN BOOKS AWARD WINNER


PEN USA NONFICTION BOOK AWARD FINALIST


Ten short stories written by Lily Hoàng and Vi Khi Nào explore a range of styles from love stories to speculative fiction and fairy tales.


In this inventive collaboration, Hoàng and Nào blend Vietnamese, English, and Vietlish, creating a fresh, dynamic voice that captures the complexity of the Vietnamese-American experience. Their stories dive into themes of generational trauma, identity, and cultural clash, offering everything from love stories pieced together from memory, to folklore and fantasy, to post-apocalyptic worlds where Vietnamese-American identities are reimagined.


Timber and Lụa is playful, moving, and full of surprises. The authors experiment with language and translation, showing how meaning can shift and change between cultures. Released on the fiftieth anniversary of the Fall of Saigon, this collection is both a celebration of diasporic voices and a tribute to the power of storytelling across generations.

280 pages, Library Binding

Published November 4, 2025

About the author

Lily Hoang's first book, PARABOLA, won the Chiasmus Press Un-Doing the Novel Contest. She is also the author of the forthcoming novels CHANGING (Fairy Tale Review Press, Dec. 2008) and THE EVOLUTIONARY REVOLUTION (Les Figues Press, 2009-10). She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of English & Women's Studies at Saint Mary's College in Indiana."

Reviews

[Mai H.]

ANHPI TBR

📱 Thank you to NetGalley and Red Hen Press

[Kamilė | cobwebshelves · Rating 3 out of 5]

“it’s not that she lacks the capacity to admit her own error, but she hates rhetorical questions. she hates that she could not tell him that love is a type of bell pepper, 94 percent water with some negligible fat, and doesn’t do so well on the scoville scale. she hates that she is, in fact, very, very hungry, if he would just stop all this and feed her. or let her take the broccoli to the next lover.”

2.5, rounded up.

“timber and lua” is ambitiously experimental. each story is presented in three versions — first in vietglish, then whole in vietnamese and english, respectively. it’s undoubtedly the main selling point. the vietglish pages come with a small dictionary, allowing you to unravel each story as a puzzle, before tackling it in your preferred language. i don’t speak vietnamese, so going through the vietglish versions forced me to slow down as i checked the translations, seeing how the word fit into the sentence structure, before comparing it to the english version a few pages later. it can help you pay more attention to the words and their meaning, connecting closer to the story.

however, despite my interest in the format, the stories themselves didn’t have me quite as engaged once i got to the english-only versions. we get some interesting sci-fi concepts, as authors play with time and space, as well as some explorations of gender fluidity, but overall none of the stories fully clicked for me, leaving an eerie feeling behind them.

thanks to netgalley and red hen press for the arc.

[star · Rating 3 out of 5]

the blurb really described this book well in the sense that's it's a blend of vietnamese, english and vietlish stories that are VERY experimental. the most common structure was that the first story would be in vietlish (so barely any english words in there) to the part that for every page of story you have another page of dictionary for it. then you get the same story but now once fully in english and then vietnamese. i loved seeing how differently a story can be read just because of the language used.

then this collection of short stories also is just as experimental as promised in the blurb. i would even go as far to say that this is one of the most experimental/peculiar/strange books i have ever picked up. it took quite some time to get used to but it's both very creative in it's array of literary styles (different kinds of short stories, poetry, plays) as well as in the many different genres used, points of view and so on included. even on a sentence to sentence level it's really daring in how language is used to the point where at times i had to re-read passages multiple times and take in every word separately because these sentences were so bizarre and out of pocket that i could barely register what was going on.

there's also rather a lot of futuristic elements in many of the stories that are connected with absurd story elements and themes and honestly a lot of the stuff was quite sexual, there's a lot of mention of private parts, sex in general, fetish stuff and also way more sexual abuse than i would have anticipated. i'm not the biggest fan of that so that did lower my enjoyment a bit.

so essentially i would recommend this to people who want to really challenge themselves, who want to try out an entirely different kind of story that might be challenging on multiple levels like the narrative structure, the genres, characters, language and so on!

[Molly · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you’re into speculative fiction, this is absolutely a book you should pick up. I really loved it—honestly more than I expected. One of the most interesting aspects is the way it weaves two languages together within the same passages. It adds texture and depth in a way that feels natural instead of gimmicky.

The final story was especially delightful. It has a noticeably different feel than the others—partly because it's the longest—but that actually allowed it to breathe and unfold in a really satisfying way.

This is a solid five-star read for me. It’s clever, immersive, and just a joy overall. If speculative fiction is even remotely your thing, you’ve got to give this one a try.

[kienn · Rating 5 out of 5]

experimental fiction collection of short stories retold in vietglish english and vietnamese... i love experimental fiction and language and as a second gen viet american nothing else has replicated the feeling of losing a language, feeling half clueless to another world of meaning.. this book is one of a kind. i want to revisit it one day... if i ever become fluent .... which feels strange for me to say

[JXR · Rating 4 out of 5]

the stories are so experimental. there are versions, mostly, in vietlish, vietnamese, and english, though I found the vietlish part comprehensible by itself. 4 stars. tysm for the arc.