“The true account would necessarily be joyful, rather than morose, and surrendering to joy wouldn’t mean I was abandoning you. A celebration of how it began, rather than a chronicle of free fall, a tribute to that first sip, rather than all the spinning rooms that followed. It would be an account of love and duty, not just anger and hatred, and it would be filled with dreams, and the memory of having once looked to the future, and an eagerness to dream again. It would be boring, because you simply had to be there. It would be poetry and not history" (p. 189).
This quote appears right before the conclusion of the book. Having attended therapy, Hsu decides that he wants to eventually write about his relationship with Ken. Here, he refers to the title of the book. That is to say, he questions what it would mean to "stay true" to an accurate depiction of the past and of Ken. Crucially, he decides that such an account must focus on "love and duty" as opposed to "anger and regret" and that "it would be poetry and not history" (p. 189). The reader – having just read the account that Hsu refers to here – will be able to see the extent to which he remained true to this intention. As such, this quote is a distillation of the memoir as a whole.
“Sometimes, things are fucked up. You take refuge somewhere and realize it’s not the dream after all. Cops harass you for no reason; your weary parents’ moods seem governed by forces you can’t yet name" (p. 136-137).
This quote appears shortly after Ken's death, while Hsu is playing in a softball game with the Richmond Youth Project. Having hit the ball while at bat, Hsu runs around the bases and thinks these thoughts while sliding into third base. The notion that "things are fucked up" recurs throughout the book (p. 135). In fact, Hsu says those very words while reading the eulogy at Ken's funeral. Here, he expands the idea that "things are fucked up" beyond Ken's death alone. Indeed, he identifies a whole number of ways in which "things are fucked up." While this might seem pessimistic, or even nihilistic, it is this very realization that helps Hsu cope with Ken's death. Indeed, he realizes that many other people are experiencing the same kind of pain and sadness as him. Despite this fact, he realizes that one cannot let this stop them from living their life. Instead, they must charge ahead just as Hsu charges into third base on the baseball diamond.
“I realized how wrong I’d been to assume that his life was a breeze, shot through with invincible golden hues. I even felt protective of him in that moment, surprised, and slightly awed, by the fact that he held on to such grand visions of what life could offer" (p. 75)
Early in their friendship, Hsu has something of an idealized notion of Ken. He regards Ken as "flagrantly handsome" and someone for whom "high school had been a dream” (p. 43). Hsu sees that Ken is charismatic and popular and has a “white and blond and conventionally pretty girlfriend" (p. 43). As he says in the passage quoted above, he had assumed "that his life was a breeze, shot through with invincible golden hues" (p. 75). Here, however, Hsu realizes that Ken has also had difficulties and that perhaps his life has not been so idyllic as it might appear. In this scene, Hsu comes to know Ken in a deeper, more real way, thus solidifying the bonds of their friendship. In a broader sense, this exchange also forces Hsu to realize that external perceptions and judgments like the ones he had about Ken might not be based in truth.
“Choose knowing rather than being known” (p. 59).
The work of Jacques Derrida is particularly important in Stay True. Here, Hsu quotes a line from Derrida's work on friendship. For Derrida, friendship is when someone decides to "choose knowing rather than being known" (p. 59). As Hsu reveals, he “had always thought it was the other way around” (p. 59). In a sense, this line from Derrida becomes the definition of Hsu and Ken's friendship. While they are two very different people with different interests and personalities, they are drawn together by their willingness to learn more about each other. Rather than merely sharing interests in say, music or baseball, they share an interest in each other as people despite their many differences. As a result, Ken and Hsu develop a deep and profound bond.
“I feared our plane to Mexico would crash. That the taxi to the resort would collide with oncoming traffic. That I would contract some rare illness from the bedsheets. That my softball scar would require amputation" (p. 139).
After Ken's death, Hsu and his friends take a trip down to Mexico. In this passage, it is clear that Ken's death has had a tremendous and enduring effect on Hsu. Given that a previously unthinkable thing has happened, he becomes fearful that more is bound to go wrong. Fortunately, none of his fears transpire. Nonetheless, this passage is an illustration of the psychological effects that trauma can cause, and the extent to which Hsu had to heal from such trauma.
“Your consciousness was like a city, and you scavenged and searched for treasured memories of better days. Or maybe memory is more of a fire than a city. It’s uncontrollable, fickle, and destructive" (p. 148)
A theme that recurs throughout Stay True is the nature of memory. In writing the memoir, Hsu endeavors to capture all of his memories of Ken. At the same time, he acknowledges that memory is fallible and that he will never be able to perfectly capture, let alone remember, everything that occurred in the past. This passage encapsulates both sentiments. On one hand, he suggests that memory is like a city that can be "scavenged and searched." On the other hand, it might be an "uncontrollable, fickle, and destructive" fire. Importantly, Hsu does not adopt one perspective or the other, and the tension between memory as a creative or destructive force runs throughout the entirety of the book.
“To me, Asian American was a messy, arbitrary category, but one that was produced by a collective struggle. It was a category capacious enough for all of our hopes and energies. There were similarities that cut across nationality and class: the uncommunicative parents, the cultural significance of food, the fact that we all took our shoes off at home" (p. 93).
To put it in broad terms, Stay True is a memoir about the Asian-American experience. At the same time, Hsu questions what the category "Asian-American" actually means. Indeed, while both he and Ken are Asian-American, Hsu acknowledges that they had very different experiences of life in America based on the fact that Hsu was Taiwanese and Ken was Japanese. At times, it seems to Hsu that there are as many differences among the different nationalities of Asian-Americans as there are among white Americans.
Here, however, Hsu offers a concise explanation of what the Asian-American identity category denotes for him: "the uncommunicative parents, the cultural significance of food, the fact that we all took our shoes off at home" (p. 93). Regardless of "nationality and class," Hsu sees these traits as common for all Asian-Americans (p. 93). Therefore, rather than treating Asian-Americans as a singular, monolithic block of people, Hsu instead suggests that they are a diverse group of people connected by shared experiences.
“The present was a drag. We lived for the future. Youth is a pursuit of this kind of small immortality. You want to leave something behind. Record a single and put it out in the world, the part of the world that never dies, granted new life in the used bins and secondhand shops" (p. 60).
Here, Hsu writes about the common desire of young people not only to reach adulthood, but to make a lasting mark on the world. Indeed, as young students Hsu and Ken are both ambitious and have big dreams for the future. Yet in this passage, Hsu is subtly foreshadowing Ken's death. That is to say, Ken will tragically never get to experience the future that he dreams about. Without saying as much, Hsu appears to caution young people to enjoy the present and not to dwell on the future, because that future may never arrive. At the same time, in writing Stay True, Hsu has granted Ken a "kind of small immortality." Even though Ken's life was cut short, Hsu makes it clear that he left behind lasting memories with his loving friends.
“Maybe this was what it meant to live in America. You could move around. You were afforded opportunities unavailable back home. You could refashion yourself a churchgoer, a pizza lover, an aficionado of classical music or Bob Dylan, a fan of the Dallas Cowboys because everyone else in the neighborhood seemed to be one" (p. 24).
Stay True is a probing analysis into what it means to belong both personally and culturally. In this section of the book, Hsu describes his parents' experience arriving in the United States. As immigrants from Taiwan, the United States presented a vastly different cultural landscape, and one that required Hsu's parents to adopt new traits in order to fit in. As Hsu writes, his father “acquired various characteristics that might have marked him as an American” including an interest in American music and a new fashion sense (p. 17).
At the same time, this passage questions what it actually means to be American. Does it mean that one has to go to church, listen to Bob Dylan, and watch football just because it is what the people around them do? Of course, Hsu is not suggesting that this has to be the case. Rather, he is highlighting the pressure to conform and assimilate that people like his parents might have faced. Focusing on the Asian-American experience, Hsu documents the fact there are many different ways to "live in America."
“Only the future can provide the key to the interpretation of the past; and it is only in this sense that we can speak of an ultimate objectivity in history. It is at once the justification and the explanation of history that the past throws light on the future, and the future throws light on the past" (p. 176).
After Ken's death, Hsu goes through a collection of Ken's possessions that he has kept. In the collection is a “paperback copy of Edward Hallett Carr’s What Is History?” that Ken had bought while they were shopping for textbooks together. Opening the book several years after Ken's death, Hsu discovers that Ken “had read it closely, underlining passages that moved him, taking notes and writing responses in the margins" (p. 171-172). Hsu then begins to read the book and feels a closeness to Ken in the process. He then alludes to several of the book's passages, including this one.
This passage underpins Hsu's decision to memorialize Ken with a book. That is to say, only more than twenty years into the future can Hsu begin to interpret his past and the tragedy of Ken's death. Just as this part of his past inevitability influenced the course that his life took, his present life also bears upon his interpretation of his past, and to his connection with Ken. Here, he writes that "we were on opposite ends of Carr’s thought, Ken in the past, me in the future," with Stay True serving to link both present and past together (p. 176).
