Memoirists often fret about depicting real people who will eventually read the final product. But in Stay True, so much of the narrative revolves around your friend Ken, a fellow Cal student who died tragically during your time here. Was there a unique responsibility in writing about someone who is not here to read the book?
Itâs indeed strange to turn oneself and oneâs friends into characters. I tried to make it clear that the book is filtered through my memory, and all memory is leaky and fallible. Iâm still friends with most of the people in the book, and I felt responsible to them, as well as to anyone who knew and loved Ken. Not responsible in the sense that I wanted to get their stories factually correct, but in the sense that I wanted to properly depict them as the heroes in my story, to pay tribute to them in ways I couldnât at the time. Heâs not physically here, but I assumed it would somehow reach him.
In May, Stay True won a Pulitzer for Memoir/Autobiography. Three months later, you joined more than 200 writers in signing an open letter challenging the Pulitzer Prize requirement that authors be documented United States citizens. What motivated you?
Iâve never understood why prizes or competitions abide by the logic of national borders, when the art they hold up is often about complicating or transcending those borders.
Your first book, A Floating Chinaman, focuses on the literary career of Hsi Tseng Tsiang, an underappreciated Chinese-American experimental writer who died in 1971. For those who want to get to know Tsiangâs work, what would you recommend?
Tsiang was a really iconoclastic writer and thinker. He self-published most of his books and sold them throughout the streets of Manhattan. This was before he moved to Hollywood and became a pioneering Asian-American actor. I find a lot of his writings to be very prescient about politics, identity, success, and failure. The easiest book to get ahold of is The Hanging on Union Square, which is this strange, bawdy, joke-filled satire about an unemployed man navigating Depression-era New York who may or may not rise above it all.
Youâve been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 2017 (joining a considerable roster of Cal alums, by the way). Iâve always wondered: How often do staff writers go in to work at the offices at 1 World Train Center? You and your family live in Brooklyn, so thatâs just an A train ride away. But I have a hard time believing Lawrence Wright flies in from Austin on the regular…
Thatâs amazing. I had no idea all those people went to Berkeley!
I imagine writers used to go more often than they do now. It depends on a variety of factors, like whether you like writing in an office or at home, whether youâre the type who covets office space, how much writing you owe the magazine. I only write a few times a year so Iâd have a hard time convincing them I needed dedicated space that could be put to better use by a fact-checker or copy editor.
You write so poignantly in Stay True about the artists and thinkers you gravitated toward as a young person, from Kurt Cobain to Jacques Derrida. What do you think about the fact that, for some young people today, your book means to them what those works meant to you?
I donât mean to sound falsely modest, but Iâve never really thought about this, because itâs too weird to think about. Itâs incredibly humbling for you to say that. I donât have any answers to anything, and my work is really just a reflection of the conversations I shared with friends and teachers, the art that I was obsessed with. Hopefully, if people like what I do, it inspires them to seek out the stuff that influenced me (as I did for Cobain when I was obsessed with his music) and they feel inspired to do something totally different with all of it.
OK, last question: Itâs 1997; youâre picking up your friends at Ida Sproul Hall and driving to a late-night burrito spot in the Mission District. If you leave at 11 p.m., crossing the Bay Bridge and finding street parking will take approximately 23 minutes. Given the time constraints, what tracks would have been on your ideal bridge-crossing mixtape?
What a delightful question. In 1997, and given the time of night and very PG task at hand, the tape would have probably had the Verveâs âBitter Sweet Symphonyâ (slightly longer songs were always preferable for timing distances), DJ Shadowâs âMidnight in a Perfect Worldâ (for late-night ambiance), My Bloody Valentineâs âNo More Sorryâ (same reason), Yo La Tengoâs âAutumn Sweaterâ (a 1997 favorite), the Beach Boysâ âGod Only Knowsâ (a stalwart on mixtapes 1996â1998), and maybe some barely audible song by the Receptionists, Low, or Catâs Miaow (for the dissonant joy of listening to something so quiet while cruising through the night).
