Stay True: A Memoir
Book by Hua Hsu
DETAILS
Publisher : Doubleday (September 27, 2022) Language : English Hardcover : 208 pages ISBN-10 : 0385547773 ISBN-13 : 978-0385547772 Item Weight : 13.6 ounces Dimensions : 5.7 x 0.9 x 8.6 inches Best Sellers Rank: #2,137 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #1 in Emigrants & Immigrants Biographies #4 in Asian & Asian Americans Biographies #80 in Memoirs (Books) , A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR • From the New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu, a gripping memoir on friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art. “This book is exquisite and excruciating and I will be thinking about it for years and years to come.” — Rachel Kushner, two-time National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author of The Flamethrowers and The Mars Room 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. Read more
REVIEW
I think I've been spoiled, to an extent, by reading some recent hard-hitting works about Asian-American life, like Ocean Vuong's ON EARTH WE'RE BRIEFLY GORGEOUS and Anthony Veasna So's AFTERPARTIES. I adore indie music, books about music, and I adore memoirs, particularly those from writers. So what exactly fell short for me here? I'm not entirely sure. I don't think STAY TRUE ever fully answered the question: why does this story need to be told? We've all been to college, we've all fell in love with various indie bands, many of us have had friends die in tragic circumstances when we were young...but why *this book now* ??? I couldn't ever figure out why this book had been published, barring Hua Hsu's background as a New Yorker contributor, and pummeling pop culture outlets with various DIY publicity campaigns on the book's behalf, which seems to have worked to a degree, at least from a marketing standpoint. But it doesn't make the rigid, workmanlike writing any more engaging, and it doesn't make the book as a whole glow when it just sort of shimmers out. It doesn't find poetry in the crevices of things, instead of very very basic observation. I was frequently bored by the storytelling, and the occasional, pedantic lecturing. It's basically a story about a kid who goes to college, while his father returns to Taiwan. They fax, they talk about bands, the kid loses his best friend in a tragic carjacking and attempts to understand the random evil that took his friend's life. But...so what? The friend, Ken, is so thinly sketched here, and seems to take the mantle of a symbol rather than a person, and their relationship so superficially sketched. As a result, the heartbreaking loss the book wants you to feel never quite hits home. The story isn't emotional, it's humorless, and it seems to use bullet points as its primary narrative engine. It operates at a remove. It's working very very hard and does rather little. Hua Hsu's life has been pretty ordinary, all told, and there's a reason why everyone on earth isn't befitting of a memoir. Hsu has a background writing about music, but even his observations about the 90s grunge scene, and bands such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam, are rather basic and mundane, sprinkled with details and observations that have been made a thousand times over, making even a Pitchfork review seem multi-faceted and luminous in comparison. I never fell for the voice, I was never won over by the story, and I wasn't taken in by the prose. It felt very scrappy, a 20-year-old's rudimentary diary entries, written on an Urban Outfitters journal from 1993, transmuted to memoir form. A pass from me, but perhaps others will be won over in the end. Average at best.
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