WINNER OF THE 2023 PULITZER PRIZE IN MEMOIR • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR • ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE NOMINEE • WINNER OF THE CHINESE AMERICAN LIBRARIANS ASSOCIATION'S BEST BOOK AWARD FOR ADULT NONFICTION

A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, TIME, The Atlantic, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, NPR, The Boston Globe, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, The Millions, BookPage, Lit Hub, Reader's Digest, Vulture, Goop

“An elegant and poignant coming of age account that considers intense, youthful friendships but also random violence that can suddenly and permanently alter the presumed logic of our personal narratives.”—2023 Pulitzer Prize Committee

“Quietly wrenching. . . To say that this book is about grief or coming-of-age doesn’t quite do it justice; nor is it mainly about being Asian American, even though there are glimmers of that too. . . This is a memoir that gathers power through accretion—all those moments and gestures that constitute experience, the bits and pieces that coalesce into a life. . . Hsu is a subtle writer, not a showy one; the joy of Stay True sneaks up on you, and the wry jokes are threaded seamlessly throughout.”—The New York Times

“[Hsu] is that rare thing: a chronicler and critic who [engages] fully, emotionally as well as intellectually, with every subject. . . In Stay True Hsu makes us see how his and Ken’s and their friends’ stories are tossed on the sea of history, how identity takes shape from a thousand factors, how personalities flow into one another, how chance and destiny can be hard to tell apart.”—Lucy Sante, The New York Review of Books