PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A gripping memoir on friendship grief the
search for self and the solace that can be found through art by the New Yorker staff writer
Hua Hsu “This book is exquisite and excruciating and I will be thinking about it for years and
years to come.” — Rachel Kushner New York Times bestselling author of The Flamethrowers and
The Mars Room One of the New York Times ’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • A Kirkus
Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Century 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.
