Days after the tragic murder of his friend Ken in the summer of 1998, Hua Hsu, then 21 years old, ventured out into the California sunshine and purchased a journal. On the very first page, he wrote with permanent black marker, “Everything is wrong” – because it was. He found laughter distressing, pop harmonies unbearable, and even shaved off his hair as an act of defiance. Hsu’s relationship with everything, including his ability to write, changed drastically after his friend’s brutal killing.
“While grieving, I spent a long time searching for a language,” reflects Hsu, an author and journalist. Even after 25 years, the sensory remnants of Ken’s murder are still vivid in Hsu’s mind as he speaks to me from his well-organized office in Brooklyn on a Monday morning. The past continues to permeate the present, particularly that summery day in 1998. Though Ken’s college years were merely “a three-year period” of a now more than 30-year-long life, their friendship continues to captivate Hsu, prompting him to revisit it time and time again over the past decades.
“It’s one thing to cling to a moment from the past, but it’s another thing to contemplate all the positive aspects that solidified this person in my memory,” ponders Hsu, now 46 years old, as we discuss his moving new memoir, “Stay True,” a book he spent 25 years crafting. Already an English professor at Bard College and a staff writer at the New Yorker, Hsu took his time to unravel the unfathomable: a meaningless act of violence that robbed him of a budding friendship soon after turning 21. “He complied with their demands,” writes Hsu. “He climbed into the trunk. He handed over his bank cards. Yet, they still shot him execution-style in the back of the head.” The fact that this monstrous act is only revealed halfway through the book speaks to Hsu’s elliptical approach to examining his grief in his forties.
“When a narrative is disrupted, doubt lingers,” Hsu remarks as we delve into the passage of time. “As I grew older and distanced myself from that moment, the act of writing became a way for me to comprehend why these memories persisted.”
New York Magazine hails the memoir as “an evolutionary step for Asian American literature,” and rightfully so. Hsu’s exploration of memory during traumatic experiences is cerebral and thought-provoking. He questions the reliability of our recollections and how we can trust the memories we carry, especially as time progresses and we reshape the past to shape our present selves.
“What was it about that particular moment? What made this friend so significant?” Hsu wonders aloud. “I didn’t realize, until embarking on this writing journey, how little male friendship is analyzed.” He deadpans when discussing his initial encounter with Ken at Berkeley – a complex meeting that initially kept them worlds apart. “I despised Ken the first time we met,” he admits. The 18-year-old from San Diego, with all his fraternity antics, represented a type of person Hsu, the earnest and genuine individual, wanted to distance himself from. “In this book, I’m the punchline,” Hsu states. “I’m the one who’s mocked.” He smiles and continues, “I was reserved, while Ken was outgoing. He exuded confidence, while I viewed people with suspicion.” Hsu remains friends with most of his college peers, and after reading “Stay True,” they often remark, “You’re not as prickly as you describe yourself.” He lets out a laugh.
For Hsu, a Taiwanese immigrant’s son who made his own fanzines and ardently wrote to the Nirvana fan club, Ken embodied everything he rebelled against. In addition to being strikingly good-looking, Ken appeared too eager to embrace the adult world. However, at the core of their differences, Hsu recognized a curiosity and willingness to understand in both himself and Ken during their first real interaction. “The more time we spent together, the more I realized we shared a love for obscure ’80s trivia about TV shows and baseball,” Hsu explains. “He showed genuine interest in the music I enjoyed. He understood that everyone possessed unique qualities that they could offer, and he made an effort to discover those qualities in others.” Soon enough, these two young men became inseparable – embarking on late-night drives, watching videos together, and creating mixtapes of their favorite songs for each other.
“Millions of people loved Nirvana, and millions of people wore old cardigans, but my journey to that music was different,” Hsu states. Despite their contrasting aesthetics, with Ken embracing the mainstream and Hsu leaning towards indie culture, they shared a similar experience as Japanese Americans in terms of personal development. While both were labeled as “Asian American” by white America, their differences highlighted the nuances of belonging and identity in the United States, especially the feeling of being American while being different from the dominant culture. While Hsu was navigating his identity as the child of immigrants, his parents were also grappling with their relationship with their adopted country. Hsu’s father left Taiwan in 1965, and his mother followed suit in 1971. Both arrived as students when the Immigration Act of 1965 eased restrictions on Asian immigration. Seeking proximity to friends and Chinese cuisine, they settled in Cupertino, California, now part of Silicon Valley, where Hsu grew up amidst bubble tea cafes and “a few Apple buildings that seemed like a joke.”
As an American child, Hsu used his zines as a means to shape his identity. However, his parents remained rooted in their connection to the home they left behind. “Perhaps I sought an emotional language through music that somehow related to that context,” muses Hsu. When Kurt Cobain died in 1994, Hsu’s father sent him a heartfelt fax, posing the struggle of life: “You must find meaning, but at the same time, you must accept reality.”
In the years following Ken’s death, Hsu found it challenging to embrace this perspective. “In the aftermath, my parents didn’t explicitly encourage me to sit with my grief,” Hsu explains. “If it weren’t for Ken’s death, I probably wouldn’t be a writer today.” Hsu’s parents believed it was crucial to keep moving forward, as life continues, which Hsu found to be harsh advice at the time. Now, at 46 years old, he fully comprehends their viewpoint. Just as one can never fully grasp the depths of their grief, Hsu wonders whether it’s possible to truly understand one’s parents. “From a young age, my father would say, ‘Your life is harder than mine because you have so many more choices’,” Hsu recalls. He writes, “The first generation focuses on survival, while those that follow tell the stories.” For Hsu, writing became the channel through which he found meaning in the past and processed his grief. In the weeks after Ken’s murder, not only did melodies change for Hsu, but so did his handwriting, growing “curvier and more ornate, like the violent fury of graffiti tags.” On the first night without Ken, he typed a letter detailing everything left behind – from the bandage on his car’s air freshener to the lucky volleyball shirt still residing in his hamper at home.
“If it weren’t for Ken’s death, I probably wouldn’t…”
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