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 friendships that are instrumental, where the lure is concrete and the appeal is what they can do for us. There are friends that we talk to only about serious things, others who onle make sense in the blitzed merriment of deep night. Some friends complete us, while others complicate us.  Maybe you feel as if there is nothing better in this 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)

Join a group of enthusiastic readers to discuss great memoirs of significance to the broad field education! Our first Book Club for Spring Semester is on Stay True, by Hua Hsu (New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2022). This Pulitizer Prize Winner and New York Times bestseller explores the Tawian-American author’s unusual friendship with his college friend, Japanese-American Ken, who is polar opposite in interests, hobbies, and outlook. But Ken and Hua bond through their struggles with American culture — until Ken’s life is tragically shortened in a carjacking. This memorable work is described as “a gripping memoir on friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art” (publisher’s description).

Hua Hsu is a New Yorker staff writer and Professor of Literature at Bard College. He is also the author of A Flloating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2016).

Book Club is co-sponsored by the Graduate Writing Center. It meets once a month throughout the semester, with a program for three memoirs, and is open to all students and staff. The first eight people to rsvp will receive a free copy.

Where: 305 Russell