Hua Hsu

Hua Hsu (born 1977) is an American writer and academic, based in New York City. He is a professor of English at Bard College and a staff writer at The New Yorker. His work includes investigations of immigrant culture in the United States, as well as public perceptions of diversity and multiculturalism. He is the author of A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific. His second book, Stay True: A Memoir, was published in September 2022.

Early life and education

Hsu was born in 1977 to a Taiwanese American family in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. He moved with his family to Plano, Texas, and then Richardson, Texas. They later moved to southern California, then ultimately Cupertino, where his father was an engineer; his mother stayed at home with Hua. The family lived in Cupertino from about the time Hsu was 9 to 18, though his father moved to Taiwan to pursue work and Hsu often spent summers and other school vacations there.

Hsu attended college at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied political science. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1999. He then pursued doctoral studies at Harvard University to study Asian American literature, earning a PhD in the American history in 2008. His doctoral dissertation was titled, "Pacific Crossings: China, the United States, and Transpacific Imagination". His doctoral advisor was the essayist Louis Menand.

Career

Hsu was a tenured associate professor of English and director of American Studies at Vassar College until 2022, when he became professor of English at Bard College. Since 2017, he has also been a staff writer at The New Yorker. His work includes investigations of immigrant culture in the United States, as well as public perceptions of diversity and multiculturalism. Other research work and interests include studies of literary history and arts criticism.

Hsu has been a fellow at New America, a public policy think tank and a contributor to The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Slate, and The Wire. His 2012 essay for Lucky Peach about suburban Chinatowns was nominated for a 2012 James Beard Award for food writing. He is a board member of the Asian American Writers' Workshop. His book, A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific, was published in June 2016 by Harvard University Press. He was a 2016 National Fellow for the New America Foundation.

Hsu's second book, Stay True: A Memoir, about an important friendship he had while in college, was published by Doubleday on September 27, 2022. It received a starred review in Publishers Weekly. Jennifer Szalai of The New York Times wrote, "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 book was named one of the "10 Best Books of 2022" by The New York Times and The Washington Post. The book won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography and the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award for Memoir and Autobiography. In 2024, The New York Times Book Review ranked Stay True as the 58th best book of the 21st century.

Personal life

Hsu lives in Brooklyn. He is married with a son.