Stay True: A Memoir
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A gripping memoir on friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art, by the New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu
“This book is exquisite and excruciating and I will be thinking about it for years and years to come.”—Rachel Kushner, New York Times bestselling author of The Flamethrowers and The Mars Room
One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
In the eyes of eighteen-year-old Hua Hsu, the problem with Ken—with his passion for Dave Matthews, Abercrombie & Fitch, and his fraternity—is that he is exactly like everyone else. Ken, whose Japanese American family has been in the United States for generations, is mainstream; for Hua, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, who makes ’zines and haunts Bay Area record shops, Ken represents all that he defines himself in opposition to. The only thing Hua and Ken have in common is that, however they engage with it, American culture doesn’t seem to have a place for either of them.
But despite his first impressions, Hua and Ken become friends, a friendship built on late-night conversations over cigarettes, long drives along the California coast, and the successes and humiliations of everyday college life. And then violently, senselessly, Ken is gone, killed in a carjacking, not even three years after the day they first meet.
Determined to hold on to all that was left of one of his closest friends—his memories—Hua turned to writing. Stay True is the book he’s been working on ever since. A coming-of-age story that details both the ordinary and extraordinary, Stay True is a bracing memoir about growing up, and about moving through the world in search of meaning and belonging.
“This book is exquisite and excruciating and I will be thinking about it for years and years to come.”—Rachel Kushner, New York Times bestselling author of The Flamethrowers and The Mars Room
One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
In the eyes of eighteen-year-old Hua Hsu, the problem with Ken—with his passion for Dave Matthews, Abercrombie & Fitch, and his fraternity—is that he is exactly like everyone else. Ken, whose Japanese American family has been in the United States for generations, is mainstream; for Hua, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, who makes ’zines and haunts Bay Area record shops, Ken represents all that he defines himself in opposition to. The only thing Hua and Ken have in common is that, however they engage with it, American culture doesn’t seem to have a place for either of them.
But despite his first impressions, Hua and Ken become friends, a friendship built on late-night conversations over cigarettes, long drives along the California coast, and the successes and humiliations of everyday college life. And then violently, senselessly, Ken is gone, killed in a carjacking, not even three years after the day they first meet.
Determined to hold on to all that was left of one of his closest friends—his memories—Hua turned to writing. Stay True is the book he’s been working on ever since. A coming-of-age story that details both the ordinary and extraordinary, Stay True is a bracing memoir about growing up, and about moving through the world in search of meaning and belonging.
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Community Reviews
I breezed through this one because the writing was so smooth. I absolutely loved this memoir. 4.25/5
This was a quick read, albeit a bit self-centered as the author focused more on his own interests than that of the main subject of this memoir: his friend.
This book made me feel a certain way that a book never has. It was oddly nostalgic, oddly paced, but I think most importantly, Hua has interesting thoughts that I would never expect a person to have. While I don’t think that Hua is a person I feel deeply connected to or resonate with, I found it to be a very telling perspective of the world. I think reading about his friendship with Ken and experiencing his loss was the thing I connected with the most. It reminded me how every friendship, every relationship, is uniquely between the two people who are experiencing it. I found this memoir to have enlightening ideas about what the past, present, and future really mean. And I think it really shares something about what it means to be an individual in the context of culture, society, race, etc.
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