Hua Hsu’s Memoir Stay True Is as Affecting as a Great Pop Song | Pitchfork

The New Yorker writer talks about how breaking down the binaries of cool, Nirvana’s radical legacy, and Beach Boys’ heavenly harmonies informed his poignant new book.

Save this story Save this story Hua Hsu’s Stay True is a coming-of-age memoir that brings music, memory, identity, and grief into a mid-1990s tableau of indie-pop mixtapes, late-night record stores, and xeroxed zines. The son of Taiwanese immigrants, Hsu enters UC Berkeley as a malcontent who hates parties, embraces a straight-edge lifestyle to better sharpen his judgments, and finds Pearl Jam “appalling.” He forges an improbably deep friendship with Ken, his opposite in almost every way: a well-adjusted frat brother who wears Abercrombie and listens to Dave Matthews , whose Japanese-American

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