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.
Symbols & Motifs
Cigarette Smoking
Cigarette smoking runs as a leitmotif through Hua’s memoir. When Hua first arrived at Berkeley, he identified as straight edge and thus rejected smoking, drinking, and drugs. Shortly after meeting Ken, however, the two began frequenting the smoking balcony on the third floor of their dorm. Neither Hua nor Ken smoked at the time, but smoke breaks served as a pretense to talk. Shortly after their first outing to a thrift store, Ken saw Hua pretending to study and asked him to go out to the balcony, where they discussed a frat party Ken attended and Hua’s thoughts on Heidegger. “I need a smoke” became their code whenever they wanted to talk, take a break from their homework, or escape a room full of strangers. Hua describes the lengths to which he and Ken went to prevent others from intruding on their conversations: “Leaning on the railing, chatting conspiratorially, pretending that we were smoking so that nobody would bother us” (48). Hua and Ken began smoking in earnest shortly thereafter, and, by sophomore year, Hua delighted in the ritual of it: “Pull the strip and peel back the cellophane. Smack it against your wrist. Flip the lucky one around. A fresh pack of cigarettes, twenty more conversations” (61). Cigarette smoking became central to Hua and Ken’s friendship, building “natural breaks into conversation” (50). After Ken’s death, Hua continued smoking and admired “the way that smoke evaporated into the air, aimless and ephemeral” (122).
Gift Giving
Gift giving is a recurring motif in Hua’s memoir. Hua describes several gifts he received from Ken during their time at Berkeley. The first, a set of glasses, was not just practical, but also made Hua feel grown-up, contributing to the book’s coming-of-age theme. The glasses also symbolized the lasting nature of Hua’s friendship with Ken, who assured him “he’d frequently be over to use them” (64). Ken gave Hua a birthday gift during their sophomore year, a wooden desk tray for business cards, addresses, and phone numbers. Ken specified that the gift was for Hua’s zine, so he could keep in touch with his readers. Ken went so far as to write his own name and home address on one of the blank cards and filing it under the letter “I”: “Keep in touch” (64), he then joked. After Hua moved into a new apartment junior year, Ken offered him a modernist clock with no numbers, “just a white circle with the minute and hour hands poking out” (87). Like the glasses, the clock made Hua feel like an adult. Hua describes the clock as cool, inspirational, and thoughtful, in contrast to other gifts he received, such as the pager his friends gave him, even though he was “clearly the type of person who resisted things like pagers” (87). Unlike Ken’s gift, the pager reminded Hua that he was misunderstood.
Hua engages with Mauss’s theory of the gift, focusing on indebtedness and delayed reciprocity. Stay True is Hua’s long-delayed gift to Ken. By making Ken a central figure of his memoir, Hua kept his friend’s memory alive. This tribute is of a piece with Mauss’s “In Memoriam” of 1923, which memorializes the colleagues Mauss lost during World War I. Mauss mused about how the future might have looked if there had been no war and his colleagues had lived. “In Memoriam” was his way of making them known to future generations. Similarly, Stay True allows future generations to know Ken, revealing as much about Ken as it does about the author.
Zines
Zines are important motifs in Hua’s book. Hua began creating zines not only to get free CDs from record labels and bands, but also to communicate with likeminded music lovers, “to find a tribe” (26). Zines helped Hua craft his identity during his formative years, allowing him to present himself as someone outside the mainstream. Hua wrote short essays about music, film, literature, and art. He also illustrated his zines with collages using pictures from diverse sources, such as music magazines, Chinese textbooks, and driver’s education manuals. Hua’s zines were both earnest and cynical. They prompted him to seek out obscure material and then convey his erudition to his readers.
Hua’s zines were not just outlets for self-expression, but also relationship builders. Curious about his son’s hobbies, Hua’s father once asked Hua to fax him a copy of his zines, which he called “publications.” Hua also worked on his zines with a neighbor who shared his taste in music: “I showed up each day at her apartment with a couple sandwiches and a bag of Doritos. We would listen to her Mojave 3 CD and work at her coffee table” (64). Ken not only supported Hua’s interest in zines by buying him a zine-related gift (a wooden tray), but also penned an op-ed about sports fandom for Hua’s zine, which Hua published after his death. Zines also function as symbols of love in Hua’s memoir. On Hua’s 21st birthday, for example, Mira presented Hua with a zine about their relationship, which included business cards from restaurants they frequented, ticket stubs to concerts they attended together, diary entries chronicling the early days of their relationship, and poems about their future.
