46 pages • 1 hour read
Hua HsuStay True: A Memoir
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | YA | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary
Chapter 7 describes the summer after Ken’s death. The first night, Hua penned a letter to Ken detailing everything he would miss, notably, their routines and inside jokes. Hua and his friends supported each other during this period, eating and laughing together, and sharing memories of Ken, which Hua used in his eulogy. Hua viewed Ken’s body the morning before the funeral. He describes a fly landing on Ken’s cheek and another fly landing in his journal as he finished writing the eulogy. The funeral was packed with Ken’s relatives, members of the San Diego Japanese American community, Ken’s fraternity brothers, church members, and Hua’s friend group. Delivering the eulogy brought Hua a moment of relief, but he was overwhelmed with emotion at the wake at Ken’s parents’ house. After flying home to Berkeley, Hua shaved his head and diligently avoided anything that reminded him of Ken. He returned to teaching hoping routine would help him through the grief. A week and a half after the funeral, Hua told some of his students about what happened to Ken. From that point onward, one of his students always carried his teaching materials from the classroom to the youth center. That August, at a staff-student softball game, Hua purposely crashed into a 13-year-old girl while sliding into third base, tearing up his shin in the process. The adults were shocked by his aggression, but his delighted students mobbed him when he reached home plate. Hua flew to Taiwan with his mother at the end of the summer. Although he rarely spoke to his parents about what happened to Ken, his father continued to reach out to him through music and letters. The weekend before the start of senior year, Hua traveled to Mexico with his friends as a tribute to Ken’s openness to fun. However, Hua was unable to shed his sadness, describing himself as “the death of the party” (141).
Chapter 7 Analysis
Chapter 7 focuses on the dual themes of loss and grief. Hua experienced profound sadness after Ken’s death. He coped with his feelings primarily through storytelling. The day he learned about Ken’s murder, for example, Hua found solace in sharing stories about Ken: “It was my way of coping, of telling stories, of thinking that stories could build a bridge over an abyss” (122). Spending time with friends was also a way of keeping Ken present, “a spirit made real in the clink of two bottles, the magical appearance of a sad song in the air” (122). In addition to telling stories about Ken, Hua distracted himself from the loss by gathering stories from his friends for the eulogy. Working on the eulogy was therapeutic for Hua, displacing some of his grief to “the stress of an impending deadline” (123). Hua shared secrets about Ken with his friends, telling them what he (Ken) loved about them. The exchanges made him feel close to Ken, “like an executor of his spiritual estate, parsing out wisdom or delight” (124). He delighted equally in hearing stories about his friend.
Stay True is a tribute to Ken. The memoir draws on the writings Hua produced in the immediate aftermath of Ken’s murder. For example, Hua describes a letter he wrote to Ken on the night he learned about his death. The letter focused not on the extreme highs and lows of their friendship, but on the mundane: “I typed a letter to him detailing everything I would miss—his soft skin and flatulence, our routines and inside jokes. Hua further lists “things he’d [Ken] left behind […] All that I’d learned about loyalty, time-travel, treating a hangover with steak, eggs, and a side of pancakes” (123). Hua continued to ossify his memories of Ken in writing in the days that followed: “I wrote it all down, because I never wanted to forget any of it—the ache, the release, the flashes of euphoria when we were all laughing together” (125). Hua’s impulse to record his memories extended token’s funeral, where he “obsessed over chronicling everything, noting all the atmospheric weirdness” (126). Through similes and imagery, Hua conveys the emotional impact of saying goodbye to his friend: “Everything seemed like a movie that week, the outline of friends against the orange-purple brilliance of dusk” (125). Equally impactful was seeing Ken’s parents, who didn’t cry at the funeral, but “looked as if they would never laugh again for the rest of their lives” (131). Nostalgia set in soon after Hua returned to Berkeley. Hua described his “aching nostalgia for things that happened just hours earlier” and writing them down “as a historian might describe a centuries-past crossroads” (140). This nostalgia spilled into his interactions with his students in Richmond, who learned as much about math as they did about “the lure of nostalgia, and memories of childhood, and wanting to grasp at those feelings of carefree innocence again” (133).
