Hua Hsu’s “Stay True”

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Hua Hsu joins Eric Newman to discuss his latest book, Stay True. The memoir recounts Hua’s feelings of being caught between the Taiwanese culture of his immigrant parents and the burgeoning Silicon Valley suburbs in which he was raised. A lifeline is thrown to him in the form of Ken Ishida, a confident young man from a multigenerational Japanese American family. At first, it seems that Ken has everything Hua lacks — the looks, the gravitas, a finger on the pulse of American culture. But during their first years of college, the young men grow closer over late-night conversations on the challenges they find in common with one and other. But one night, a shocking and random act of violence takes Ken away and Hua and his friends must make sense of the tragedy and the broken lives left in its wake.

Also, Andrew Sean Greer, author of Less is Lost, returns to recommend Julian Delgado Lopera’s Fiebre Tropical.