A lovely, elegiac memoir about Hsu's college best friend, who tragically dies--I loved reading about growing up Asian American in the 90's in Berkeley.

I really enjoyed reading Stay True. It is a memoir of a young man who is struggling to find his way as an Asian American. The first chapters describe his relationship with his parents in a very honest way. I was enthralled.

He then tells about his college friends and kids he meets through volunteer work. This memoir is beautifully written and dives into male friendships in a way I haven’t thought about before.

The heartache in this book is palpable and real. I highly recommend picking this book up.

Thank you to NetGalley for this free ebook.

This beautiful debut book by Hua Hsu is a memoir that effectively pulled me into his story and even though I am decades older than him and a white woman, I could relate to his memories of going to college and finding your friend group and trying to figure out who you are. He is a child of Taiwanese immigrants and when his father returns part-time to Taiwan for career opportunities, they fax each other letters and homework. These letters and his father's advice were incredibly moving to me. I don't want to give away too much but this book is about finding yourself, finding your "tribe" and dealing with grief and loss and ultimately hope. I could not put this book down and highly recommend it. I look forward to other writing by this author.

Thank you to Netgalley and Doubleday Books for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This is a fabulous coming of age memoir that also serves as a moving tribute to the author's college best friend. I loved the photos he used at the beginning of each section.

Thank you NetGalley and Doubleday Books for accepting my request to read and review Stay True.

Author: Hua Hsu
Published: 09/27/22
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs -- Nonfiction (Adult)

My relationship with memoirs is love/hate. The question is should I read the entire description or continue to skim? This old dog can be tweaked. I haven't decided. There are so many bullet points in Stay True that I would have reaped.

He was/is an immigrant child, and that cannot change. His parents ideal family and teachings are vastly different than the nonexistent American standards (My opinion.). What is not different, is his desire to be noticed for everything but his Taiwanese heritage. Ironically that makes him like everyone. We all want a friend.

In my opinion, the cultural differences hurt him visually. At one point he thought he was being mocked for his daily clothing. You'll have to read the book for the truth. Like we all do, he tried to fit in. He suffered loss, gained growth, and became educated.

I recommend this memoir as a reminder, don't judge a book/person by the/their cover.

I tried for many chapters to really like this book. I think it was a good idea but turned out to be too long. The author went on and on with every single thing that went through his head. It really needs to be edited down to get to the most important points. Sorry, I really want to give all books I read a great rating.

Review posted at BookBrowse: https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/reviews/index.cfm/ref/pr289536 s

The title of Hua Hsu's requiem-like memoir, Stay True, captures the essence of its contents. The phrase refers to an in-joke between then-undergraduate Hsu and his friend Ken, who was later murdered — an event that had an enduring impact on the author.

With the help of his journals from the time, New Yorker staff writer Hsu recounts his college years at Berkeley, and then Harvard. Born in 1977, Hsu is a Gen-Xer who reached college age in the 1990s, a decade that calls to mind fax machines, grunge rock bands like Nirvana and the early days of the internet. Period details permeate this memoir, and become an organic component of the writer's experiences, drawing readers into his world.

The son of Taiwanese immigrants, Hsu spent his early college years exploring his sense of self and feeling out his niche. Spending much of his time in record stores around the San Francisco Bay area, music became a way of seeking meaning and articulating identity. He says at one point, "I judged people by their CD collections" — the subtext being that identity can be consciously constructed by collecting music that is associated with a particular social group. In other words, it was possible to "choose who you wanted to be." This notion of defining oneself through music highlights the importance of finding one's place in the world. While the pursuit of identity is a goal for most young people, Hsu's status as a second-generation immigrant adds another layer of complexity to his quest.

This fragmented sense of self also becomes manifest through Hsu's burgeoning interest in zines (see Beyond the Book); their eclecticism and subculture vibe ooze a desire to eschew all things mainstream and forge a unique persona. Poignantly, he declares that zines were "a way to find a tribe." This introduces a dilemma: how to fit in yet remain unique. Hsu's retrospections resonate — many of us have gone through similar stages in life.

Hsu delivers his recollections in a style that is both journalistic and intimate. It is a style that comes into its own when covering his friendship with Ken. Initially, Hsu finds Ken "too loud for life" and says he "hated him." Also of Asian descent, Ken has fully assimilated into American culture when they meet at Berkeley, unlike Hsu. With his penchant for Abercrombie & Fitch, Pearl Jam and smoking, Ken is thoroughly mainstream and, in Hsu's eyes, indistinguishable from the crowd — a stereotypical "frat boy." And yet, a bond develops. Ken becomes a permanent fixture in Hsu's life, establishing a friendship characterized by everyday college interactions, regular car journeys and late-night conversations while puffing on cigarettes. Hsu discovers hidden depths in his friend that he hadn't previously acknowledged. Ken becomes so knitted into the fabric of Hsu's life, and that of their peers, as to function as an essential limb of their collective body.

So when Ken's body is discovered one July morning, the victim of a carjacking and fatal shooting, the impact is cataclysmic. The positioning of this event within Hsu's narrative is symbolic in that it occurs around the halfway point. The tragedy splits Hsu's life in two — the before and the after — and reflects the central role Ken played in his life. Hsu becomes increasingly introspective, although this brings him no closer to "fathoming darkness." The second half of the narrative places much emphasis on his difficulty in coming to terms with the aftermath of tragedy.

Ultimately, Stay True is also a book about writing. Hsu turns to journaling his thoughts and experiences in the wake of Ken's murder, and while the purpose of this was probably more to do with working through his grief than for posterity, his journals clearly became an invaluable source for this narrative. That the end result is this memoir suggests that Hsu did find some form of catharsis in the writing process, and in sharing his exploration of friendship, loss and selfhood. His writing is understated, a style that is the perfect vehicle for the content but may not be to every reader's taste. Likewise, the musical references that pepper this memoir are a strength in that they provide rich cultural detail, but, to a certain degree, they rely on the reader's familiarity with the references for their full impact to be conveyed. Nevertheless, Stay True is a visceral, honest memoir with the potential to connect with a wide readership.

Honestly, I had a little trouble getting into this book. Perhaps it is because I simply don't relate to the nineties (too old!) and was more interested in the Asian American aspects of this story. I think younger readers will identify much better than I did and enjoy the descriptions of nineties culture and the backgrounds of the two young men.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book. I know it will be loved by many readers.

Stay True, Hua Hsu writes about his close bond with his Japanese American college friend Ken, who tragically dies.

Definitely a book that makes you remember what’s important in life and cherish the moments with the people you love. Interesting read.

Like a memoir/written Journal.

Thank you to NetGalley for a copy for an honest review.

Stay True us a memoir written by a Taiwanese American as he recalls an intimate but unexpected college friendship cut short by tragedy.

Hsu, now an English professor and staff writer at the New Yorker, began his undergraduate years at Berkeley. He was unique in that he loved indie bands and creating zines. “I saw coolness,” he writes, “as a quality primarily expressed through erudite discernment, and I defined who I was by what I rejected, a kitchen sink approach to negation that resulted in essays decrying Beverly Hills, 90210, hippies, private school, George Bush…and, after they became trendy, Pearl Jam.”

One day he meets Japanese American fraternity brother Ken. He quickly wrote him off as “a genre of person I actively avoided—mainstream.” But interestingly enough they did hit it off, and to Hsu’s surprise, he and Ken grew very close. They found common interest such as dissecting classic cult movies. They wrote a screenplay inspired by the cult classic film The Last Dragon, prompting long conversations about the nature of Black and Asian solidarity. As time passed, their relationship grew more personal, in that Hsu sought out Ken for advice the night Hsu planned to lose his virginity, and years later, Hsu tentatively referred to Ken as his best friend.

Then, something tragic occurs. Ken is randomly murdered in a carjacking incident after leaving a party. This loss plunges Hsu into a world of grief and self-blame that lasts for years.

This memoir is written with exquisite emotion and tenderness, as Hsu intimately shares his memories of an unexpected but nurturing, and compassionate friendship.

Here is a stunning story of a unique friendship, then grief, then recovery.

It will remain in your mind long after reading the last words.

The text is rich in vocabulary and at times this reader consulted The Oxford Dictionary for clarity.

This memoir is much more than I originally imagined it would be. It is first a love letter to a friend who died an unimaginable death as the result of a senseless crime. But it is also a perfectly captured moment in time, a fond remembrance of the author's Berkeley years, when happiness was determined by the quality of friendships rather than a score on a test or a semester grade. When late-night conversations had the urgency of life-changing debate. When writing and creating art that others could share was all-consuming and absolutely mandatory. The internet was merely a tool of connection, and not all that much more. This is a cautionary tale—never take your friends for granted—and a lament: we didn't really appreciate what we had. Hsu presents a fairly rarified world (a world away from recent memoirs I've read, like Beautiful Country), but tells a surprisingly universal story. My college experience was completely unlike this, and yet I found myself reminiscing in many of the same ways. Hsu finally comes to terms with a loss that left him utterly broken-hearted, one that shaped the adult he's become, and imprinted itself on all his relationships since. In facing this now, all these years later, he honors his friend, and offers a compelling path forward for all of us.

Grief comes in so many different forms. It’s refreshing to read a perspective that reflects on the depth and impermanence of friendships formed during early adulthood and what happens when a friendship ends because of an untimely death.

I have to admit that the first half of this book felt a little bit too much like a “you had to be there” recounting of a sprawling friend group and academic revelations sparked by different professors and books. I think fans of The Idiot by Elif Batuman will enjoy this recollection of college life during the dawn of the World Wide Web.

“In those early, barely governed days of the internet, the online world was manageably vast. It felt like a world you could master. There were only so many rooms to explore. You could spend a lot of time there, but not that much. Mostly, you realized that people were bored everywhere.”

I was waiting for the tragedy to give this friendship a more archetypical meaning, but upon finishing the book, I came to realize how Hua Hsu resists tying this narrative up in a neat bow. The reader instead gets the chance to follow his process of trying to understand the meaning of the beginning and end of this friendship through his writing. Everything is dissected and viewed through different lenses (political, sociological, philosophical) and mediums (photography, zines, music).

“Moments that seem inconsequential until you have a reason to hold on to them, arrange them in a pattern.”

These pages are thick with nostalgia and the attempt to capture fleeting memories. It made me think about the ways we process grief and grasp to create a story around it, a story that can both help and harm us.

I received a digital advance reader copy from Netgalley and Doubleday Books in exchange for an honest review.

This is a memoir, but it’s mostly a love letter to a friend that was murdered. I connected with and felt each piece related to Asian Americanism. The rest, unfortunately, fell a little flat for me.

Was a little triggered by the events that occurred in Jasper, but then again, I’m a native Texan that’s not white.

This is a very short read, and many of you will connect with it more than I did.

I went in to this book thinking it was going to be a memoir more about asian identity growing up in America. Instead while it touches on asian identity and the authors participation in organizations about identity it was more of a story about friendship and grief. It brought me back to college age where people truly act like they know it all when they are just floundering and figuring out the world.

Through the prism of a too-brief but defining friendship, much is revealed in Hua Hsu's debut memoir, Stay True. Like the zines he created in high school and at Berkeley as a way of "sketching the outlines of a new self," Hsu writes a memoir collage that reckons with the nuances of growing up Asian American (Asian and American). A New Yorker staffer, the author braids music, philosophy, film, art, and even a tidge of fashion into a coming-of-age story that reads like a collage of reconstructed self. The result is a touching and revelatory elegy, a snapshot of the '90s, and a quest to explore friendship, grief, and what makes us 'us.' 
[Thanks to Doubleday Books and NetGalley for an opportunity to read an advanced reader copy and share my opinion of this book.]

I received a complimentary ARC of this memoir from Netgalley, Hua Hsu, and Doubleday. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read Stay True of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work.

A firm definition of how Friendship should be defined, I found this work thought-provoking though a bit repetitious and redundant in places—still, a very intimate look into the acts and words that should define friendship. Very much an interesting and enlightening read.

When Hua Hsu first met Ken — a Pearl Jam devotee, confident fraternity brother and aspiring architect at UC Berkeley — his first instinct was aversion. Ken was too “mainstream,” writes Hsu in “Stay True: A Memoir.” “He was a genre of person I actively avoided.”

Released Sept. 27, “Stay True” parses Hsu’s past with fierce perceptivity, plating The New Yorker staff writer’s youth in compelling prose. Despite Hsu’s sour first impression of Ken, the two become unlikely friends; together, they debate movie subtexts, nurse a twin pair of cigarette habits and exchange fervent dreams for the future. Then, only a few years after their first encounter, Ken is violently murdered in a carjacking. For decades after the tragedy of Ken’s passing, Hsu turned to writing — searching, by any means possible, for meaning in a seemingly senseless world.

“Stay True” thus emerges as Hsu’s effort to both preserve memories and navigate the contours of youth. Interspersed within the memoir’s narrative body are scholarly excerpts, patchworked journal passages and old photographs — simultaneous remnants of his zinemaking hobby and reminders of an era drawn taut by tragedy. Gradually, Hsu’s words become as much authorities of change as artifacts of the past: “The more I wrote about Ken, the more he became someone else,” Hsu writes, even as he, too, fashions a new persona for himself through grief.

Entrenched in the glaze of memory, Hsu writes with rumination armed by the fragments of his youth. Teetering between details wrought with flashbulb clarity and others with the retrospection of year-drenched haze, “Stay True” grapples with the problem of specificity posed by the memoir genre. Hsu recalls exactly how many songs it took to drive to the grocery store on College Avenue (six, to be specific), yet admits to have lost the inside joke that the memoir’s title borrows from. He bears the inconsistency, however, with grace; a keen understanding of the complications of time penetrates each page, grounding the book’s philosophizing tone.

In an interview with Vulture, Hsu referred to his Berkeley days as an “aesthetic.” It’s a description that implies a sensuous experience of the departed past, flush with circumstantial visuals and the peculiarities of a bygone campus. Yet, the assuredness of his writing in “Stay True” evinces an uncanny, coeval familiarity that feels more like visceral revisitation than distant recollection — as Hsu maps Berkeley’s Southside streets and returns continually to Amoeba Music, there remains a sense of intimacy that suggests that the phantom of the past is close enough to hold.

Hsu’s prose is measured and thoughtful, spiking with lyricism at all the right moments while maintaining a piercing contemplation of the past. There’s a subtleness to the memoir’s sentimentality that gently interrogates the dynamics of family, relationships and identity; quiet strength infuses its sincerity. As he reflects on his experience as a child of Taiwanese immigrants, scrutinizes social theories on friendship and ponders his relationship with art and mourning, Hsu draws tangents to his greater realizations about the world — language, reciprocity, catharsis. Though “Stay True” does, at times, meander across its myriad themes, its digressions are accompanied by Hsu’s deep percipience and attuned sensitivities.

A latent power resides in the way Hsu opens the vault of his experiences without the ceremonies of dramatism; the memoir realizes itself unhelped by blatancy yet propelled by candor. His teenage invincibility is rendered with incisive self-awareness but reared by youthful romanticism. His political observations are honest, but unwilling to unfurl and overcrowd. The dichotomy positions the reader as both ever-present witness and willing confidante — even, perhaps, a friend.

“‘I’m going to write about all this one day,’” Hsu tells his graduate school therapist on the memoir’s final page. It’s a clever way of ending a book without shelving the author’s story; Hsu proves his claim before declaring it. And prove it he does: more than embodying a coming-of-age chronicle, “Stay True” is a poignant reflection on the intricacies of finding purpose against a hurtling backdrop of time, change and friendship, and all colored in the unfaltering, tender force of Hsu’s voice.

I was hooked after reading the first page. A coming of age story by one of my favorite writers. Thank you Hua Hsu.

This expansive memoir follows Hua Hsu's formative years in college and his three-year close friendship with Ken, another Asian American man attending Berkeley. Hua defines himself at college--rebel, lover of music, creative--and juxtaposes that identity with Ken's--a charming frat boy. These two shouldn't form a close bond, but they do. Unfortunately that bond is severed when Ken is murdered in a carjacking.

Using their friendship and Ken's death as focal points, Hsu discusses so many things. Identity, politics, love, family, guilt, redemption. It's amazing how he explores so many "life" issues through the 3-year friendship and years-long grief of this central relationship in his life. While the stories and details shared here are specific to Hua and Ken, they expound on bigger issues. Why Hua felt guilt about Ken's death. Why Ken? This memoir is emotionally resonant, especially in how it conveys how a short friendship like Ken's and Hua's can create lifelong memories and monumental growth. I really like this one.

I was looking forward to this book but while it was a good read, I unfortunately did not connect with it as much as I wanted to.

I liked Stay True's exploration of culture, identity and belonging but found myself being bored for the most part. I did not get most of the references and musicians (or at least that's who I assumed they are) nor could I picture the setting and vibes, so all of it felt really dry to me.

Nevertheless, I appreciate Hua Hsu sharing his experiences as a college student, the son of Taiwanese immigrants and a zine lover while navigating life and relationships (both platonic and romantic) as well as trying to find his place in the world. I found it striking how he seemed to eschew all things mainstream but was oh so very hipster.

In this reflective memoir, the author also grapples with the death of a friend and the guilt that comes with it. One part that stuck out to me in particular was when a mutual friend asked, "Were you and Ken really that close?" and Hua Hsu "panicked", acknowledging that maybe he'd misremembered a lot along the way, "But how could I ever be sure?"

Everyone grieves differently and being privy to the author's side of things was certainly illuminating and left me pondering.