Stay True: A Memoir (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

by Hua Hsu

Suburbs are about the leisurely conquest of space, an alternative to the uncomfortable density of the city. They seem to run free from history itself, offering a sense that nothing was there before. But the illusion of tranquility frays at the edges: the neurosis required to maintain so neatly manicured a lawn, the pristine sidewalks that nobody walks on, the holy wars fought to keep one municipality from oozing into the next. Suburbs suggest stability and conformity, yet they are rarely beholden to tradition. Rather, they are slates that can be wiped clean to accommodate new aspirations.

That’s the dilemma of life: you have to find meaning, but by the same time, you have to accept the reality. How to handle the contradiction is a challenge to everyone of us. What do you think?

Maybe you can never be loved for the reasons you think you should be loved. Maybe the seeds of your rebellion will always be forgotten.

Youth is a pursuit of this kind of small immortality. You want to leave something behind. Record a single and put it out in the world, the part of the world that never dies, granted new life in the used bins and secondhand shops.

Everybody likes something—a song, a movie, a TV show—so you choose not to; this is how you carve out space for yourself. But the right person persuades you to try it, and you feel as though you’ve made two discoveries. One is that this thing isn’t so bad. The other is a new confidant.

“We cannot hope the devil will change their minds.”

I think the most depressing aspect of keeping a journal is thinking, or knowing, that one day I’ll be sitting somewhere reading this. Trying to relive some moments, but struck not by recaptured emotions, rather being struck by how damn deep I tried to sound at some point in the past.

What did it mean to represent for another, to bring them with you on your adventure? Would they one day be replaced by the character you invented in tribute? Maybe he just wanted to keep him around until he understood how to properly mourn him. To keep him around, a living memory, until he was ready to move forward, alone. Not raising the dead so much as singing along to an