Published in September 2002, Stay True is a memoir about Hua Hsu's maturation as a young Asian American man. The death of Hsu's friend Ken, who was killed while they were both students at Berkeley, is a focal point of the book. In tender detail, Hsu describes both their unlikely bond and his process of coping with the loss of his young friend.
Stay True received critical praise upon its release. Reviewing the book for The New York Times, Jennifer Szalai described it as a "quietly wrenching memoir" and wrote that it is a work "that gathers power through accretion — all those moments and gestures that constitute experience, the bits and pieces that coalesce into a life." Similarly, Lucy...
