Summary:
Section seven begins with a scan of the covers of two magazines, Slant and Hardboiled, that Ken wrote for during his time at Berkeley. Hsu describes his process of grieving for Ken in the early days following his death. He begins drinking Newcastle Brown Ale and wears a hat that Ken had left in his apartment. He collects objects that had some association with Ken, and becomes inseparable from his friends who were all united in mourning their friend. Hsu also begins to write journal entries addressed to Ken, explaining “I wrote him things that were crass and profane, silly and accusatory, broken and desperate, just to see if he could read from a great distance" (p. 124).
Hsu and his friends travel down to San Diego for the funeral where they all share a cramped hotel room. Hsu remembers that it was “the week flies were everywhere” and notes that flies wold land in every place they went (p. 126). That Saturday, they view Ken's body. When Hsu looks into the casket, he sees that “a fly landed on his cheek” (p. 127). Hsu delivers the eulogy at the funeral service written together with all of his friends. He speaks glowingly of his friend, saying, “the man knew how to live. The twinkle in his eye, the different haircuts—all of them exemplary—the way he could just get away with things, whether it was causing a ruckus at the library or nearly causing you to miss a flight" (p. 128).
After the service, Hsu and his friends go to Ken's family home for dinner, and Hsu marvels at their ability to host company at a time of such grief. That night, Hsu, Dave, and Paraag go to “a casino that Ken often mentioned," though Hsu finds it to be depressing (p. 130). They fly back to Berkeley the following day.
Back in Berkeley, Hsu resumes his work at the Richmond Youth Project. With his students, Hsu writes that he "felt a responsibility to keep them safe, even though I didn’t understand the particular dangers of their lives" (p. 132). He often takes them on rides in his car and they listen to music together. Outside of work, Hsu spends his time mourning together with his friends.
One day, Hsu takes his students to movie at the shopping mall. After the movie ends, Hsu tells several of the students about what happened to Ken and they offer their condolences. Later that summer, the students and the staff play a softball game together. Hsu arrives at the game wearing a hat that had belonged to Ken. When at bat, he hits the ball and begins to run around the bases. Reaching second base, he decides to run to third. He slides into the base and cuts his leg badly.
Hsu's work at the Richmond Youth Project ends and he travels with his mom to Taiwan. There, they go to a temple to pay tribute to their ancestors. After lighting a candle, Hsu sees “a fly landed on a string of beads” (p. 138). He then explains that after Ken's death his mother said that he and his friends “had to find a way to get on with our lives" (p. 138). As they leave Taiwan, Hsu's father gives him “a cassette of Bach’s cello suites” (p. 139).
At the end of the summer, Hsu travels down to Mexico with his friends. He fears that something horrible will happen but slowly gets more comfortable over the course of the vacation. As he writes, “partying in Mexico was the kind of thing I never would have done before Ken’s death, but I hoped it would connect me with an openness to fun that honored his memory" (p. 140). As the section ends, Hsu notes that his scab from the accident at the softball game came off while he was in the water in Mexico.
The book's eighth section begins with a scanned black and white poster for the rave that Hsu attended when Ken was killed. Hsu opens this section by discussing the kinds of violence and danger he and his friends experienced during their time at Berkeley. For example, Hsu writes, “I got jumped for my wallet a few months prior to Ken’s party, just down the street from the Rapa-Nui" but when the teenagers discover he has nothing of value in the wallet they return it (p. 143). Still, Hsu claims that "none of this made Berkeley seem dangerous" (p. 143).
Hsu and his friends enter their senior year at Berkeley and continue to mourn Ken. Hsu takes a political theory class with a professor named Rogin, whom Hsu describes as “a slight, frazzled man" (p. 146). Hsu is thrilled by Rogin's teaching style and asks him to supervise his undergraduate thesis.
Hsu continues to write his journal entries to Ken, and argues that “writing offered a way to live outside the present” (p. 148). In October of that year, Ken's favorite baseball team, the San Diego Padres, makes it to the World Series. Hsu and his friends watch and Hsu feels that his “entire faith in higher powers rested on the outcome of this series" (p. 150). After a bad call by the umpire, the Padres fall behind in the first game and go on to lose the series to the Yankees.
Next, Hsu describes a series of violent and tragic events that occurred around the time that Ken was killed. For example, a few days after Ken's death, the assistant coach of the Berkeley football team was struck by lightning during a camping trip. Hsu adopts the mantra "it’s fucked up the way it is sometimes" (p. 152). Hsu then relates the story of Matthew Shephard, who "was brutally killed by two men he met at a bar in Laramie, Wyoming" in October 1998 (p. 153).
Hsu begins to write a thesis “on representations of race in American films” (p. 154). During this time, he starts working as a tutor at the San Quentin Prison. There, he develops connections with a number of inmates, including Eddy, a Chinese-American man with “sharp cheekbones and lie-detector eyes” (p. 157). Around Christmastime, Hsu and his friends send a cheesecake – Ken's favorite cake – to Ken's parents. Mira breaks up with Hsu, and he honors Ken's birthday on Christmas Eve by buying “a six-pack of Newcastle Brown Ale and ingredients to bake a birthday cake" (p. 159).
One day at San Quentin, Hsu tells Eddy about what happened to Ken. Eddy assures Hsu “that he and the other men in the college program were, on the whole, penitent about their pasts” but Hsu thinks about Ken's killers, and wonders if they might also be held in San Quentin (p. 161). Hsu finishes his time working at San Quentin and Eddy gifts him “a bracelet made of tiny green and yellow beads that he had crafted" (p. 162). He submits his thesis – which features a dedication to Ken – and graduates from Berkeley.
Analysis:
Ken's death occurs roughly halfway into the book. By positioning the climactic episode so early in the book, Hsu places considerable focus on his process of grieving Ken's death. As Hsu makes clear, Grief is an inexplicable process that takes many forms. In Hsu's case, it involves wearing Ken's clothing, engaging with objects that remind him of Ken, and writing letters addressed to Ken. Hsu therefore effectively encapsulates the feeling of grief in his prose, which now becomes less buoyant and expressive compared to the sections in which Hsu is describing his friendship with Ken. Hsu also demonstrates the ways that Ken's death altered his relationship to other people and to the world. For example, he becomes particularly concerned with keeping the children at the Richmond Youth Project safe and he becomes increasingly fearful of danger. While he does not use the term, it could be said that he exhibits some symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
The notion that “this world is so fucked up" is articulated several times during these sections (p. 118). Hsu first says it at Ken's memorial service, and later Hsu thinks "sometimes, things are fucked up" while sliding into third base during the baseball game with the Richmond Youth Project (p. 125). Later, Hsu mentions that a baseball player at Berkeley, when asked about the protest surrounding affirmative action, responded, “it’s fucked up the way it is sometimes” (p. 139). As if to prove the fact that the world is "fucked up," Hsu includes the list of tragic events that occurred around the time of Ken's death. It is a heavy and troubling section of the book, but it effectively places Ken's death in a larger context.
Almost paradoxically, the understanding that the world is a place full of horrible occurrences helps Hsu process the grief of Ken's death. Likewise, it allows him to feel a sense of solidarity and connection with other people for whom the world is also "fucked up." This includes the prisoners at the San Quentin Prison. Indeed, Hsu's experiences at the prison are also a crucial component in his grieving process. At the prison, Hsu develops genuine connections with inmates: he learns about their backgrounds and he listens to them talk about the difficulties of their lives. While Hsu never meets the three people who killed Ken, he nonetheless engages with, and learns to humanize, people who may also have committed murder. In this way, Hsu suggests that the only way to heal from the pain of losing someone like Ken is through compassion. Justice, he seems to say, must be rooted in forgiveness.
