This Wednesday, Managing Editor Alison Hog attended a conversation with award-winning author Hua Hsu as part of Columbia School of the Arts’ Nonfiction Dialogues series.

“At that age, time moves slow. You’re eager for something to happen, passing time in parking lots, hands deep in your pockets, trying to figure out where to go next,” Hua Hsu, wearing round glasses and a long-sleeved teal shirt, read smoothly from the hardcover copy of his book. “Life happened elsewhere. It was simply a matter of finding a map that led there.” Its cover was completely wrapped with stickers of all sorts, each one placed messily on top of the other, becoming seemingly impossible to identify what hid below those. 

“Or maybe at that age, time moves fast. You’re so desperate for action that you forget to remember things as they happen,” he continued, and every person stared at him in silence. It was almost as if he was magnetic. Sitting in the poorly lit room on that drizzly weekday evening, I couldn’t help but wonder how I could have gotten so lucky. So lucky to be right there, right then, to be in the same space as Hsu as he read my favorite passage from my recently proclaimed favorite book, being witness to how all the words came to life. 

This Wednesday, Columbia School of the Arts hosted Hua Hsu as part of its yearly Nonfiction Dialogues series which invites distinguished nonfiction writers to discuss their work and life with Columbia Professor and Writing Program Chair Lis Harris. In this latest installment, Hsu, a Literature professor at Bard College and staff writer at The New Yorker, arrived at Columbia to talk about his most recent work Stay True: A Memoir. 

Stay True, winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography and the 2022 National Book Critics Circle award in autobiography, is one of the biggest breakthroughs in recent nonfiction writing. And how could it not be? It’s the kind of book that makes you think and feel, that lingers in your mind long after you finish the last page. While it mainly centers on Hsu’s unexpected friendship with easygoing frat boy Ken as undergraduates at UC Berkeley and explores the aftermath of his sudden murder, it’s impossible to fit into a box what this poignant memoir is really about—a coming-of-age story, a social commentary about being Asian American, a tribute to an impactful friendship, a journey of grief—and precisely, that is where its power, and its beauty, lie. 

It may come as no surprise, then, that it took Hsu 20 years to finish his memoir, starting right after Ken’s death. When asked why by Professor Harris, Hsu revealed he was simply not ready. “I wasn’t detached enough from the past to write about it in an interesting way,” he admitted. For a long time, Hsu wrote from a dark place of mourning. Pages were dreary, and he was convinced he was going to write the “saddest thing ever.” It took him years of ruminations to realize that for people to care about his loss, they first had to get to know Ken, in all his dimensions. He had to humanize him first.

Nonfiction writers know that capturing a person through words is one of the hardest, and arguably scariest, things to accomplish. The fear of betraying the person’s memory haunts us, or maybe I’m arbitrarily speaking from personal account, and we try to find ways to remain faithful. Hsu strived to do this carefully, commemorating both the good and the bad. He described Ken generously, going back to photographs, journal entries, and mundane pieces of life to render him as accurately as he could. He offers so many enriching details, from the songs playing in the car to the clothes worn, all of which bring everything, including Ken, to life. Because of this specificity and vividness, I felt deeply nostalgic when reading Stay True—nostalgic of times I’m still experiencing (college) and of literal times I wasn’t even alive for (the 1990s). 

One thing that struck me as startling was learning that Hsu sent every person who significantly appeared in his memoir their respective sections beforehand. “Is that weird?” Hsu genuinely asked after Professor Harris couldn’t hide her surprise, “Wow.” The room chuckled in sync. As she later explained, nonfiction writers are usually taught not to share their work because of the risks of having to change details to each person’s taste. Hsu’s decision was bold, to say the least. According to him, he wanted them to feel “inside the process,” particularly because the book, as vivid as it is, was written solely from memory. While skeptical at first, I soon understood Hsu’s point—after all, as I have learned from my own writing, memory can often be ruthless and capricious. 

Hsu, however, admitted to keeping minor mistakes as long as they didn’t alter what stood at the core of the book. “It is true to my memory,” he explained. Memory can indeed often be ruthless, but I have also learned it is subjective and unique, and how we remember our experiences and feelings does not make them any less real or valid.

At the heart of Stay True reigns the idea of memory, with writing being a place for it to go. And, as Hsu shared, a place for him to go after Ken’s death. This is evident in the memoir; we get to know Ken just as we get to know Hsu. He revealed, nonetheless, that while writing was his method of coping, his safe place to go, it also deepened his sense of isolation. He let go on the page rather than connecting with other people. In a rather biased way, I’ve always thought of personal writing as an act of bravery, of opening up and daring to explore and understand oneself. Hsu defied this notion, putting it in a new light. 

As the dialogue now shifted to the public, Hsu delved into the complex process of writing Stay True. He never wrote “the saddest thing ever,” in part because he decided to dial back and cut many parts he felt were unnecessary. “Personal writing should never be completely for a reader… you should keep some things to yourself,” Hsu explained. I was intrigued by this perspective for I have always interpreted not writing for a public as savoring the privilege to pour one’s soul on the page with complete freedom. In a sense, Hsu could be right; personal writing is about liberty but also about reflection and intentionality. Either way, doing so can be cathartic, and, as in Hsu’s case, it can have the power to change how one perceives their own experiences and themselves. “There is no sense to this tragedy,” he concluded after finishing the book, after pondering for 20 years what all of this meant.

“How did you know when it was done?” an attendee asked to close the evening. “I just felt done,” Hsu candidly admitted. “I felt what I wanted to feel,” which he described as a particular sense of being low and high at the same time, happy and sad. After a 20-year journey, I can’t even begin to fathom what that may have looked like for Hsu. All I know is that one day, I hope to reach that feeling. 

Hua Hsu via Author