#hua hsu

[vulnerableagendaofdeath]

Friendship rests on drifting in and out of one another's lives, with occasional moments of wild intensity.

— Hua Hsu, Stay True

#hua hsu #frienship #friends #poem #poetry #classic literature #literature #literature quotes #dark acadamia quotes #dark academia #moments #love quotes #quotes #light acamedia #romanticism

[dk-thrive]

I loved that feeling -that in-between state of not knowing, not remembering, just for a second.

Hua Hsu, "Stay True: A Memoir" (Doubleday, September 27, 2022)

#in between #memories #regrets #grief #loss #Hua Hsu #feel #feeling

[jacobwren]

“Derrida remarked that friendship’s driver isn’t the pursuit of someone who is just like you. A friend, he wrote, would “choose knowing rather than being known.” I had always thought it was the other way around.”  ― Hua Hsu, Stay True

#hua hsu

[wellesleybooks]

The Pulitzer Prize winners were announced yesterday, amazingly there were two novels chosen for the award for fiction.

Pulitzer Awards for Books, Drama and Music

Fiction

"Demon Copperhead," by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper)

"Trust," by Hernan Diaz (Riverhead Books)

Finalist:

"The Immortal King Rao," by Vauhini Vara (W. W. Norton & Company)

Drama

"English," by Sanaz Toossi

Finalists:

"On Sugarland," by Aleshea Harris

"The Far Country," by Lloyd Suh

History

"Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power," by Jefferson Cowie (Basic Books)

Finalists:

"Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America," by Michael John Witgen (Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture/University of North Carolina Press)

"Watergate: A New History," by Garrett M. Graff (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster)

Biography

"G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century," by Beverly Gage (Viking)

Finalists:

"His Name is George Floyd," by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa (Viking)

"Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century," by Jennifer Homans (Random House)

Memoir or Autobiography

"Stay True," by Hua Hsu (Doubleday)

Finalists:

"Easy Beauty: A Memoir," by Chloé Cooper Jones (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster)

"The Man Who Could Move Clouds: A Memoir," by Ingrid Rojas Contreras (Doubleday)

Poetry

"Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020," by Carl Phillips (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Finalists:

"Blood Snow," by dg nanouk okpik (Wave Books)

"Still Life," by the late Jay Hopler (McSweeney’s)

General Nonfiction

"His Name is George Floyd," by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa (Viking)

Finalists:

"Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern," by Jing Tsu (Riverhead Books)

"Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution’s Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction," by David George Haskell (Viking)

"Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation," by Linda Villarosa (Doubleday)

Music

"Omar," by Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels

Finalists:

"Monochromatic Light (Afterlife)," by Tyshawn Sorey

"Perspective," by Jerrilynn Patton

#pulitzer prize #books #award winners #barbara kingsolver #demon copperhead #trust #hernan diaz #harper books #riverhead books #g-man #beverly gage #stay true #hua hsu #his name is george floyd #robert samuels #toluse olorunnipa #viking books #doubleday books

[unbiviosicuro]

#hua hsu

[bookquotesforthesoul]

There are many currencies to friendship. We may be drawn to someone who makes us feel bright and hopeful, someone who can always make us laugh. Perhaps there are friendship that are instrumental, where the lure is concrete and the appeal is what they can do for us. There are friends we talk to only about serious things, others who only make sense in the blitzed merriment of deep night. Some friends complete us, while others complicate us. Maybe you feel as if there were nothing better in the world than driving in a car, listening to music with friends, looking for an all-night donut shop. Nobody says a thing, and it is perfect,

Hua Hsu, Stay True

#non-fiction #memoir #Stay True #Hua Hsu #book quote #friendship

[iirulancorrino]

My father often referred to himself as “Eastern” or “Oriental.” He didn’t get why it was so important to call ourselves “Asian American,” a term that barely existed when he first arrived in the United States. My parents recognized the names of some of the older Chinese American professors in the Ethnic Studies Department. I asked if they had any memories of the Black Panthers of it they’d been aware of the Yellow Power movement of the late 1960s. Their answers were always vague. That was a long time ago, they’d say, and we were busy.

I told them about all the protests and rallies at Berkeley, the late-night hours I was spending on the Asian American newspaper on campus. I thought they’d be proud. But they didn’t understand why these were distinctions worth fighting for. I was sympathetic, reflecting on their struggles back when they arrived — my mother’s isolation, my dad getting mugged on his first day in New York. I was grateful they had made these sacrifices for me. “For you?” my dad said with a laugh. “We came for ourselves. There was nothing in Taiwan when we left.”

— Stay True, Hua Hsu

#what I'm reading #hua hsu #stay true

[juliamargaretlu]

When you're young, you do so many things hoping to be noticed. The way you dress or stand, the music played loud enough to catch the attention of another person who might know a song, too. And then there are things you do as you step out into the world, the real world full of strange adults, testing out what it means to be generous or thoughtful. In that instant, before every memory was placed along some narrative arc, before the act of remembering took on a desperate air, I simply felt lucky to witness something so effortlessly kind--to see my friend do something that was good.

Hua Hsu. Stay True.

#hua hsu #stay true

[annacswenson]

"experiencing the intimacy of accessing another's pockets"

—Hua Hsu, from his article "Concealed Carry" in The New Yorker's September 25, 2023 issue

#hua hsu #new yorker #intimacy #doubtfulgleamofsolace

[mi-studies]

📖bookish

Continuing my read of Babel (it's going to be a long run) and also using my new LED lamp (the fact that it's dimness can be adjusted is so nice!)

Finally bought a physical copy of Hua Hsu's Stay True (been collecting Taiwanese-American literature, looking forward to reading this one! :D)

#bookstagram #books and reading #babel rf kuang #hua hsu #stay true

[dk-thrive]

Knowledge might not set you free or light your path. It could become a kind of cage.

Hua Hsu, "Stay True: A Memoir" (Doubleday, September 27, 2022) 

#Knowledge #know #hua hsu #cage #freedom #future

[roseartart]

Leon Xu at Helena Anrather, New York

From the exhibition text, written by Hua Hsu:

My obsession with Leon’s work grows out of how it makes me feel, and I can only describe that in terms of what those feelings remind me of: a friend’s story where you can visualize almost everything but definitely not everything. A beautiful song dopplering out of a passing car; it’s gone just as you recognize it. A mental screenshot from a movie you haven’t seen since you were a teenager. A face across a smoke-filled room; you can’t make out whether they’re in agony or ecstasy. Something remarkable that you try and take a picture of, only it looks wack on your phone. You keep the picture anyway, as a reminder of what you once saw.

There are no lines or borders in Leon’s paintings, just these wondrous, meticulous blurs that come into focus from a distance, and the effect is realizing that you’re not looking at a painting about reality, but about memory. These were paintings of meadows and fields, various angles of a car, a cool sign, a bouquet; these were paintings of memories, and of that moment when you recognize you are seeing something special.

And then you realize that Leon’s paintings are invitations, not to ride along through his past, but to recognize the splendor of your present. He’s trying to pass on that chill you feel when you witness something unexpectedly sublime, whether it’s the sun hitting just right off the dashboard, or a neon sign slicing through late-night mist. Most of us never notice.

#leon xu #hua hsu

[get-the-bleach]

I feel seen.

#hua hsu

[jennpelly]

For Hsu, music organizes life. It fills out memories and lends them texture and traction. It gives a person something to hold on to. It summons you out of the present with a chord progression, harmony, or lyric, shuttling you between times and places, determining who and what you keep with you in the process.

from Summer Kim Lee’s review of Hua Hsu’s Stay True

#hua hsu #summer kim lee

[humblevictory]

#memoirs #hua hsu #immigration #taiwan #american #taiwanese #america #california #assimilation #youth

[bookquotesforthesoul]

I needed to figure out how to describe the smell of secondhand smoke on flannel, the taste of pancakes with fresh strawberries and powdered sugar the morning after, sun hitting a specific shade of golden brown, the deep ambivalence you once felt toward a song that now devastated you, the threshold when a pair of old boots go from new to worn, the sounds of our finals week mixtape wheezing to the end of its spool. Which metaphors were useful and which were not, what to explain and what to keep secret. The look when someone recognizes you.

Hua Hsu, Stay True

#non-fiction #memoir #Hua Hsu #Stay True #book quote #memory #writing