“When I was in my teens and twenties, I aspired to write these polemical truths. Then, in my thirties and forties, when I was working on Stay True, I was trying to render my memories in a way that was true to how they feel as memories. I think I have a new relationship to the past. There are aspects of it that feel serene, but it’s a more dynamic relationship than what I thought was possible.”
–Hua Hsu, episode 349 of Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso
One year ago, The New Yorker staff writer and critic Hua Hsu published his singular memoir entitled Stay True. Earlier this May, the autobiography won a Pulitzer Prize.
Upon its paperback release, Hsu joins us to discuss the epigraph that frames the book (5:30) and his nomadic upbringing (9:45) scored by mixtapes (12:23) created by his Taiwanese father (15:14). Hsu then reflects on his arrival at UC Berkeley in the mid-90s (23:09) and how he formed an unexpected bond with a schoolmate named Ken (24:20).
On the back-half, Hsu describes the horrific night that Ken’s life was taken (36:58), the aftermath of this tragedy (40:15), his attempts to make sense of the past twenty-four years in Stay True (46:20), his complicated relationship to memory (49:00) and music (58:30), and how he’s held onto hope (1:03:02) through telling this enduring story of friendship.
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Show-notes:
- Order Hua Hsu’s Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir Stay True, now available in paperback.
- Read more of his writing at The New Yorker.
- Find his previous book, A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure across the Pacific.
- Follow Hua on Instagram and Twitter.
- For more, find our recommended talks with Zadie Smith, Ocean Vuong, Jhumpa Lahiri, Jennifer Egan, Hilton Als, and Min Jin Lee.
- Order your Talk Easy mug in cream and navy or our vinyl record with Fran Lebowitz.
Illustrations by Krishna Shenoi. Reference photograph by Devlin Claro.
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