Stay true
by Hua Hsu
Completed
Started on: February 1st, 2025
Completed on: May 31st, 2025
History is the story we tell ourselves, not a perfect account of reality, I added. You just have to figure out if you trust the person telling the story.
This is what I take with me after reading “Stay True” by Hua Hsu. Something that is reflected in both his writing and the current historical moment. For Hua, it means going through his memories and the happenings of his youth and making sense of his feelings after the death of his friend Ken. For the current historical moment, it represents the attempt of some political figures to rewrite history, the dark times of fascists and Nazis, or the current massacre happening in Palestine.
Hua, on his side, writes his memories with clarity and a form that brought me to the Berkeley campus, giving form to some fuzzy fantasies I had of those places made up from readings and movies.
It took me a bit because I lingered in picturing people and places in my mind, giving each character their own resemblance in my imagination.
A well-deserved Pulitzer Prize.
