Stay True, is a memoir that follows the life of Hua Hsu, an award-winning writer. It begins with Hua starting at university, where most of the memoir takes place. He has a small group of close friends, the closest of which is Ken, another student who Hua initially is cold towards. During the later half of the memoir, Ken is killed in a carjacking, and Hua is shaken. He writes in a journal, intended to be read by Ken. Hua has been struggling with his identity throughout his journey, and this makes his struggle much worse. One prominent theme in Stay True is how alienation can affect how individuals in a community see themselves, by which I mean how people can feel alone and can lose touch with who they are in new environments where they do not feel at home. In Stay True, Hua’s journey in finding an identity that makes him feel like he is part of his community represents how individuals can struggle to find a sense of self when they are alienated, and in the wake of trauma.
Hua seeks belonging, he frequently changes his traits, and this is a way that he tries to make himself more appealing to other people, and this represents how the alienated individual whittles at their identity to try and belong. In the first part of the book, when Hsu reflects on his experience in high school, he says, “I began making a zine because I’d heard it was an easy way to get free CDs from bands and record labels. But it was also a way to find a tribe. My worldview was defined by music. I cultivated a pose that was modest and small, sensitive and sarcastic, skeptical yet secretly passionate”. What this means is that Hua has a desire to be liked, and he is putting on an image of the person that he thinks people will like, instead of who he truly is. Hua’s desire to be accepted reflects how alienated individuals feel, and how their desire to be accepted drives them to artificially shape their personalities.
Hua finds identity from his relationships with other people, and he defines who he is in relation to these people. This hurts him proportionally more when he loses people, and his identity is shaken as a result. This represents how when alienated individuals meld their identities to other people to fit into their communities, they can lose touch with who they are. Near the end of the book, Hua has a conversation with Gwen, one of the members of their friend group, where she questions how close Hua and Ken were. This leads Hua to doubt his friendship with Ken, as he says, “What she said cast a pall over my memories, my ability to tell a story about myself.” A major part of how Hua has defined himself was his friendship with Ken. After the loss of Ken, Hua is already having a bad time, but when his friendship with Ken is called into question, it makes him realize that he isn’t sure who he really is. He can’t define himself without Ken. This reflects how when people tie their identities to the people they care about, loss can lead them to become unsure of who they really are.
The process of healing that Hua undergoes in the last part of the book is because he learns to form an independent identity based on who he is, rather than who he thinks people will like. This represents how when individuals come to terms with who they are, and can define themselves in a vacuum, they can find happiness. Hua comes to realize who he is in the last part of the book, when he writes his second-last journal to Ken, “I was actually happy today, I wrote in my journal that spring. I mean bullshit happy, that lighthearted feeling of carefree dizziness. The impetus for joy was a slick play during a Cal basketball game. I really hope you can read this. I don’t care if you can see through me, I wrote, confessing to a list of imperfections and insecurities. Just as long as you can see me.” Hua is finally coming into his identity. Hua has found who he is, and is able to say that he can see who he is, and so can everyone else. He has realized that the person he thinks he is, is what matters. This shows how when individuals who lose touch with who they are, figure out their identity, they can achieve fulfillment.
Hua has grappled with his identity throughout his life, and has been trying hard to find out who he is. The final realization that let him figure out how he could live with himself, and for himself granted him happiness. Stay True is a story about searching for identity, and how it can be a struggle to find it, but when we do, we are all the better for it. Few of us can accept the person we think we are, but in journeying to find out, we could discover that person we want to become, was the one that was inside us all along.