The Bonds of Friendship
Stay True is fundamentally a meditation on friendship. Throughout the book, Hsu evocatively describes the relationship he shared with Ken and the sense of grief that resulted from Ken's death. In particular, Hsu details the ways that he and Ken were different. Indeed, when Hsu first meets Ken he describes him as "a genre of person I actively avoided” (p. 43). Whereas Hsu is more reserved and culturally astute, Ken is a confident and charismatic member of a college fraternity. Despite these differences, Hsu and Ken grow to become friends.
Here, Hsu quotes French philosopher Jacques Derrida who, in his work on friendship, writes that friends “choose knowing rather than being known" (p. 59). That is to say, people do not choose to become friends because they know everything about each other, but rather that they want to learn more about each other. Even unlikely pairings – like that of Hsu and Ken – can form when two people have a genuine interest in one another. Thus, a key theme of the novel is that friendship is powerful enough to bridge divides between ourself and others.
The Beauty of Gift-Giving
Throughout the book, Hsu pays particular attention to the gifts that Ken gave to him. When Hsu moves into a new apartment in his sophomore year at Berkeley, Ken gives him a set of glasses. Explaining that he will be over frequently to drink from them, Ken says "they’re as much for me as for you" (p. 65). Later, for Hsu's birthday, Ken gifts him “a wooden desk tray for addresses, phone numbers, and business cards” (p. 65). Finally, when Hsu moves into yet another apartment, Ken gifts him “a modernist clock with no numbers, just a white circle with the minute and hour hands poking out" (p. 89).
Hsu takes this as an opportunity to analyze the practice of gift-giving. To do so, he refers to the work of renowned anthropologist Marcel Mauss. Hsu writes that in a 1923 essay titled, "Essay on the Gift," Mauss argued that gifts "strengthened the bond between people and communities" (p. 71). As Hsu explains, "every gesture carries a desire for connection, expanding one's ring of associations" (p. 71). Seen this way, each gift given to Hsu from Ken was a strengthening of the bond between them. After Ken is killed, Hsu is able to retain this sense of connection through the items Ken gave him. So, while to many gift-giving can be an annoying or unnecessary practice, Hsu encourages the reader to consider it a meaningful, even beautiful, means of connection.
The Fallibility of Memory
As a memoir, Stay True relies on Hsu's memories of the events depicted within the book. From the outset, however, Hsu makes it clear that it would be impossible to have a perfect recollection of what happened more than two decades ago. For example, he writes that as a teenager "time moves slow... Or maybe, at that age, time moves fast" (p. 11). Further, he says that the events took place before photography became ubiquitous with camera phones, and thus "looking back, you began to doubt the sequence of events. If, in the absence of proof, anything had happened at all" (p. 12).
In this way, Hsu makes it clear that his memoir will not be the perfect recreation of past events – nor is that his objective. In so doing, he challenges the reader to consider the ways their own memories are partial or perhaps even skewed. The memoir portrays the past as simply a story we tell ourselves.
Intergenerational Relations
Hsu's parents play a large role in the book. While they are supporting and loving, there is also an essential divide that separates them and Hsu. Indeed, this is the generational divide that separates all parents and their children. Commonly, this amounts to different taste, different social values, and different relationships to new technology.
At several points in the book, Hsu and his father address the differences between their generations. After Hsu sends his father an article he wrote following Kurt Cobain's death, Hsu's father responds: "Every generation has its own problem. For the young, being idealistic and feeling helpless at the same time is normal and necessary for the society to progress... Every generation has to face the problem and live through and try its best to overcome the frustration" (p. 29).
In this wise response, Hsu's father suggests that while there are many differences between generations, all generations are united in the fact that they each have to face their own problems. While the problems of the 1960s might look very different from problems today, Hsu suggests that there are more commonalities between generations than we might immediately think. Indeed, just as the youth of today are struggling to understand their parents, they will one day become parents themselves, and will, in turn, struggle to understand the problems their children face.
The Experience of Race in America
As much as Stay True is a book about grief and mourning, it is also a book about the Asian-American experience. In particular, Hsu discusses how his parents immigrated to America from Taiwan, and how this impacted his experience of growing up in America. For example, he writes that “the children of recent immigrants feel discomfort at a molecular level, especially when doing typical things, like going to the pizza parlor on a Friday night, playacting as Americans" (p. 47). It is their shared Asian-American identity that brings Ken and Hsu closer together.
At the same time, Hsu stresses that the term "Asian-American" is perhaps too monolithic a term. Ken is Japanese-American, and Hsu writes that “it’s one of those obscure parts of an already obscure identity that Japanese-American kids can seem like aliens to other Asians, untroubled, largely oblivious to feeling like outsiders" (p. 46). To Hsu, Ken's family shares many traits with white American families. Hsu also describes the differences between Taiwanese immigrants who arrived in the 1960s and 1970s and those that they came later, as well as the tensions that existed between them. In this way, he gestures toward the fact that while there are commonalities in the immigrant experience, it is also a deeply relative and personal thing that cannot be explained adequately in a term as broad as "Asian-American."
Writing as Therapy
Near the end of the book, Hsu begins to see a therapist in order to help him navigate the grief resulting from Ken's death. Leaving the therapist's office in the final scene of the book, he says, "I'm going to write about this one day" (p. 189). Stay True exists as proof of this promise. For Hsu, writing was an essential element of his grieving process over the death of Ken. Indeed, shortly after he learns that Ken has been killed, he writes: “I picked up a pen and tried to write myself back into the past" (p. 120). For months after the killing, Hsu addresses entries in his journal to Ken. In so doing, he is able to feel a continued connection to Ken, and thus to process his grief. Seen this way, Stay True is a means by which Hsu is able to memorialize his friend while trying to overcome his own sense of loss.
The Construction of a Cultural Identity
Culture and cultural identity play a large role not only in the book but also in the construction of Hsu's sense of self. Throughout the memoir, Hsu emphasizes his interest in music, film, and literature, particularly when he was a teenager. It becomes clear that for Hsu, culture is a way for him to distinguish and to express himself. For example, he is proud of discovering Nirvana when they were "a relatively obscure band from an unfenced part of the country" but is frustrated when "kids at school began showing up with the same Nirvana t-shirt, puffy yellow ink on black" (p. 25). Likewise, he spends hours combing record stores to discover new music.
In a way, Hsu pokes fun at his former self for his pretentiousness. At the same time, he gestures toward the fact that we all develop special relationships to cultural works, be they music, video games, or television shows. Hsu prompts the reader to consider the cultural items that have played formative roles in the construction of their sense of self.
