“Hua Hsu offers, with seeming effortless grace and lucidity. . .a map to his soul’s becoming. He shows how he constructed an armor against the injustices of the world, one made only of porousness and transparency, the only armor worth donning. This kind and degree of sharing is a rare gift.” —Jonathan Lethem, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Motherless Brooklyn

 

“Deep feelings coursed through me as I read Hua Hsu's story: Grief, nostalgia, pity, terror, mercy…Stay True is a crucial, sense-making, healing book.” —Maxine Hong Kingston, author of The Woman Warrior

 

“I was softly heartbroken by Stay True, which is an elegy not just for a friend but for so much else that feels lost and irreplaceable—a time of tender idleness and unmediated presence, a way that it was once possible to be young. The things that make Hua Hsu’s writing so singular—his searching grace, his rigorous sensitivity, his ability to make a living world out of the seemingly liminal—crystallize in this once-in-a-lifetime book.” —Jia Tolentino, New York Times bestselling author of Trick Mirror

 

“In this elegant, open-hearted elegy for his fallen friend, Hsu does the labor of love, of taking time to recall and make record of the quotidian detail of another man's life. In this way, he reveals for us all how aesthetics are products of both relationships and of terrible loss. The river of this memoir is quiet and deep, unassuming, it enters the reader and changes us with its capacity for connection."” —Sarah Schulman, author of Let the Record Show

 

“I was a storyteller with a plot twist guaranteed to astound and destroy,’ Hua Hsu says of himself, in a tone that is slightly ironic. And yet what he has achieved in Stay True is exactly that: to astound and destroy his reader. This book is exquisite and excruciating and I will be thinking about it for years and years to come.” —Rachel Kushner, two-time National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author of The Flamethrowers and The Mars Room

 

“Hua Hsu’s Stay True is a rich, intelligent, and beautifully crafted portrait of just about everything that matters in life. Here is friendship, art, and family cast against a distinctly American backdrop of migration in language so precise and subtle that you might not even notice how it breaks and mends your heart.” —Dinaw Mengestu, author of All Our Names

 

“In crafting Stay True, Hua Hsu has opted to trust the consequential size of memories shared with Ken over what we readers feel we are owed. The result is one of the finest memoirs I've ever read.”—Kiese Laymon, New York Times bestselling author of Heavy

 

“New Yorker staff writer Hsu braids music, art, and philosophy in his extraordinary debut. . .Hsu parses the grief of losing his friend and eloquently captures the power of friendship and unanswerable questions spurred in the wake of senseless violence. The result is at once a lucid snapshot of life in the nineties, an incredible story of reckoning, and a moving elegy to a fallen friend.” —Publishers Weekly *starred review*

 

“Stay True feels like one of those books that is the sum total of a writer’s life in thinking, craft, and curiosity, made felt at last, so that when the sentences come, they come with a deliberate, patient, and precise force. Hsu takes on the central theme of a friend’s violent loss and casts from that void a story that, somehow, despite the hurt and confusion, embraces the world around it with a steady and capacious centrifugal force. This is the endeavor of writing at its most open, meticulous, forgiving and tender—which is to say, this is writing at its best.” —Ocean Vuong, New York Times bestselling author of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

 

“Masterfully structured and exquisitely written. Hsu’s voice shimmers with tenderness and vulnerability as he meticulously reconstructs his memories of a nurturing, compassionate friendship. The protagonists’ Asian American identities are nuanced, never serving as the defining element of the story, and the author creates a cast of gorgeously balanced characters. A stunning, intricate memoir about friendship, grief, and memory.” —Kirkus Reviews *starred review*

 

“One of the finest and most heart-rending remembrances I’ve ever read. Hsu writes about grief and nostalgia, youth and identity, family and friendship, with elegant, heartbreaking clarity. I wanted to linger over every memory, to stay with Hsu as he rendered the vast expanses of time that defined youth—car rides, browsing at record stores, collaging together an identity from loves and hates. This is a book of exquisite pain and beauty. Absolutely unmissable.” —Literary Hub, "Most Anticipated Books of 2022"

 

“The brilliant New Yorker staff writer. . .describes a formative friendship he had as a young man in the Bay Area—a friendship formed around what the two young men had in common and what they didn’t.” —The Millions, “Most Anticipated: The Great Second-Half 2022 Book Preview”