Summary:
Stay True begins with two epigraphs: one from British histories E.H. Carr's book What is History? and the other lyrics from the song "Gold Soundz" by the American alternative rock band Pavement. Both epigraphs reference "the past," the significance of which will become clear throughout the book. After the epigraphs appears a black-and-white photo of a male figure in the distance standing on rocks at a beach. Several photographs are printed throughout the work, and more photographs are also described in the course of the book. Stay True is not broken into chapters, but rather into sections separated by these photographs.
In the first section, a first-person narrator, Hua Hsu himself, describes the car rides that he used to take with his friends. As he writes in the opening line, "back then, there was no such thing as spending too much time in the car" (p. 10). He introduces several characters, including Sammi, Paraag, and Ken, and describes "the fun, minor danger of driving in a caravan, as though on a secret mission, weaving through traffic, carefully looking in the rearview to see that everyone else was still behind you" (p. 11).
Hsu then describes a specific trip he and his friends took out to a friend's house “a few hours away from Berkeley” (p. 11). Hsu focuses on his friend Ken, and remembers that "the morning after... Ken stepped out onto the deck, holding a mug of coffee” (p. 12). Hsu reflects on a photo he had of Ken taken that day, and comments that “Back then, years passed when you wouldn’t pose for a picture” (p. 13). Hsu suggests that at this time – before photography became so accessible with cameras in everyone's phones – “cameras felt intrusive to everyday life" (p. 13). Now, he argues that photographs have become “evidence that you existed at all, day in and day out” (p. 13).
The next section begins with a photograph of a scanned page of handwritten math homework. In the opening sentence of the section, Hsu explains that "when my father moved to Taiwan, my family bought a pair of fax machines" (p. 15). Hsu then describes how he and his father would communicate using the fax machine – both to work on Hsu's math homework but also to talk about their lives and the music they were listening to at the time. Hsu writes that it was difficult to travel back and forth to Taiwan but that “we spent summers and winters in Hsinchu” (p. 17).
Next, Hsu chronicles the story of his parent's immigration from Taiwan to the United States. He begins by describing how his father left Taiwan to study engineering in the United States in 1965. After studying in Boston, he transferred to Columbia and later to the University of Illinois. As Hsu writes, his “father acquired various characteristics that might have marked him as an American” (p. 17). He became active in political causes, began listening to American music, and changed his fashion style to fit in to his new cultural landscape.
Hsu then writes about his mother's move to the United States in 1971 to study Public Health. After arriving at the University of Michigan she transferred to the University of Illinois where she met, and married, Hsu's father before Hsu was born in 1977. While Hsu's father had wanted to become a professor, he could not find an academic job, and so he found work as an engineer in Dallas, Texas. In 1986, the family relocated again to Cupertino, California. As Hsu describes, “Cupertino was still in transition when we arrived in 1986" (p. 22). Over time, however, it became a popular place for Asian immigrants, and Hsu's extended family slowly moved to the area.
Hsu transitions to discuss his parents' cultural identity in the United States. As he writes, "for a brief spell, my father toyed with anglicizing his name and asked to be called Eric, though he soon realized that assimilation of that order didn’t suit him" (p. 24). Hsu then describes his father's interest in music, particularly in the work of Bob Dylan. Hsu's father was an avid record, and the two would spend hours together during “after-dinner trips to the record store” (p. 25). In the early 1990s, however, the economy improved in Taiwan and Hsu's father decided to return because "a job as an executive awaited him” (p. 26).
Hsu then reflects on the intergenerational relationships in immigrant families. As he puts it, "the first generation thinks about survival; the ones that follow tell the stories” (p. 26). While his parents were categorized as Asian-Americans, Hsu writes that "they had little in common with the American-born Chinese and Japanese students" who were also considered Asian-American. (p. 27). Hsu then reveals that his parents were much healthier and happier when they returned to Taiwan, even though Hsu begins to feel a cultural distance between him and his parents.
In an energetic and expressive set of passages, Hsu explains the role that Nirvana played in his life when he was a young teenager. In particular, he admired the band's frontman Kurt Cobain, who, as Hsu argues “led us down a trail, pointing us toward out-of-the-way landmarks” (p. 31). Hsu had discovered the band before they were popular, and grew dismayed “when far too many classmates were wearing Nirvana shirts” (p. 31). During this time, Hsu begins to make handmade magazines, or zines, and develops a passionate interest in music and culture.
Hsu then documents some more of the correspondence he and his father carried out over the fax machine. His father's letters are supportive and encouraging, and in one letter, Hsu's father praises Hsu for an article Hsu wrote after Cobain's death in 1994. As Hsu father advises, “for the young, being idealistic and feeling helpless at the same time is normal and necessary for the society to progress. But the problem is that life is and has to go on" (p. 37).
Hsu starts to consider which college he wants to attend. Initially, he wants to attend John Hopkins University in Baltimore but on his father's advice he decides to go to Berkeley in nearby Oakland. He concludes this section by writing, “I was an American child, and I was bored, and I was searching for my people" (p. 39).
Analysis:
It would be difficult to overstate the importance of photographs in Stay True. Not only are photos taken by Hsu printed throughout the book, but Hsu also describes the significance of several such photos in the book itself. For him, photographs are not only a memory of a singular moment in the past, but they provide an occasion to reflect on the past more broadly. In a sense, these photographs preserve what might otherwise be lost in our imperfect memories. Indeed, he writes that his parents only remember their honeymoon “in flashes since they lost all the undeveloped rolls in Manhattan when someone broke into their car in broad daylight" (p. 19). Ultimately, Hsu suggests that photographs serve as material proof of the past and it is thus no surprise that his memoir (and memorial for his late friend) contains many photographs throughout.
Turning now to the beginning of the book itself, it is notable that Hsu focuses on the car trips that he took with his friends. The automobile plays a prominent role in American literature and culture. Writing on the history of the automobile, scholar David Gartman notes that shortly after its invention, "the automobile quickly became defined in American culture as an instrument of freedom and leisure" (p. 171). Works of culture like Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road and Frank Capra's It Happened One Night established an understanding of car travel as a process of self-exploration and discovery. The same is true in this opening passage of Stay True, in which Hsu and his friends experience both independence and camaraderie while riding in the car. In this instance, the car trip comes to stand in as a metaphor for the exploratory age of early adulthood; however, this sense of endless opportunity and excitement will quickly evaporate after Ken's death.
In these early sections – before Ken is introduced – Hsu focuses on his own upbringing and connection to his family. In particular, he discusses his parents' experience as immigrants to the United States, and his own experience of life as an Asian-American. For Hsu, there is a sense in which being Asian-American means that he is at once both Asian and American yet also somehow neither. Indeed, when visiting Taiwan he feels like "an interloper" in his parents' lives but amongst the culture of white America he also feels "discomfort at a molecular level" (p. 39).
In this section, Hsu also focuses on his father's experience of assimilation into American culture. As Hsu documents, music became an important way for his father to establish a sense of connection to his new surroundings. In particular, Hsu frequently highlights his father's appreciation of Bob Dylan. This might seem merely coincidental; however, Hsu is attune to symbolism and Dylan is a highly symbolic figure: while Dylan frequently draws upon American history and folklore in his lyrics, scholar Barry Shank argues that Dylan often seeks to "frustrate and disrupt the illusions—the broken dreams and false promises—of American culture" in his lyrics (p. 120). That is to say, Dylan addresses the ways in which American culture – and even the so-called American Dream – are illusory and unrealistic. This is significant to Stay True because, as Hsu notes, his father eventually returned to Taiwan and thus for him “becoming American would remain an incomplete project” (p. 27).
Having laid the narrative foundations of his own life and background, Hsu turns to Ken and shifts the focus to a depiction of their friendship.
