LIVE with Hua Hsu: Writing in grief’s minor key

Hello from somewhere other than Jay’s basement!

This week, we’re excited to release the episode we recorded in New York with Hua Hsu, as part of Tammy’s residency at the A/P/A Institute at NYU. Hua is a TTSG regular and the author of a new memoir, Stay True.

The book focuses on Hua’s friendship with Ken, a classmate at Berkeley who was killed the summer before their senior year. We probe the book’s depiction of Asian male friendship, or, as Hua experienced it, “two Asian American people working through stuff.” We discuss questions of craft, how to assemble two decades of documentation, and the intense highs and lows of young adulthood.

Plus: Hua on pre-Internet zine-making and private worlds, emulating Maxine Hong Kingston (who’d emulated Walt Whitman), and the joy of putting his parents and Ken in textual proximity to Aristotle, Jacques Derrida, and Charles Taylor.

You can also watch a video of our conversation, professionally produced by A/P/A, here:

Big thanks to Amita Manghnani, Crystal Parikh, and Laura Chen-Schultz!

And thanks for your support. We were psyched to see TTSG on Slate’s list of best chat podcasts of 2022! Please share the pod with anyone who might enjoy “a solid balance between the troubling and the absurd.” ☺️

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