Stay True: A Memoir

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award One of the The New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century New York Times Bestseller “Quietly wrenching…To say that this book is about grief or coming-of-age doesn’t quite do it justice…This is a memoir that gathers power through accretion—all those moments and gestures that constitute experience, the bits and pieces that coalesce into a life.” — The New York Times “[A] luminous and tender-hearted story. . . Stay True is a nuanced and beautiful evocation of young adulthood in all its sloppy, exuberant glory.” — The Wall Street Journal “An evolutionary step for Asian American literature.” — New York Magazine 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.