Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

I really liked the first half of the memoir, but thought the second half was much less successful. This focuses on Hua Hsu's life and his friendship with Ken, a college friend who dies in a random act of violence when they are still at Berkeley. Hsu is an engaging storyteller and has an interesting background, which makes this fun to read. But once Ken dies, the book swings to focusing on his death and how it affects his friends, which is unfortunately much less compelling reading (as well as being very sad!).

The first part deals with Hsu's family, specifically his Taiwanese parents, as well as his college years at Berkeley in the 90s. His parents' trajectory is fascinating: they both immigrate to the US separately, meet, and fall in love. By the time that Hsu is in high school, his dad has returned to Taiwan to work, and they communicate largely by faxing each other (I loved that some of the actual faxes are included in the book). Then Hsu is off to Cal, where he writes a zine and gets involved in different communities around Oakland. This is also very interesting as a slice of life in the 90s, particularly because Hsu is someone who gets involved. He volunteers at the Black Panther Party headquarters in Oakland when he learns they're publishing a newsletter, and he volunteers with Asian American students at the Richmond Youth Project. He and his proteges share an Asian American identity, but it fractures in interesting ways when you look at the longevity of their stays in the US and country of origin (as it should).

The second part of this book is mostly about Ken and the aftermath of his death. My main issue with this book is that Hsu spends a lot of time pondering the nature of friendship. He says that Ken understood that friendship is "about the willingness to know, rather than be known." If that's the true metric of friendship, it doesn't come across in this book - it doesn't feel like Hsu spends much time trying to know Ken, and I don't think I really knew Ken that well by the end of the story, either. On the very last page, Hsu says he, himself, is "legendarily self-involved," which might be honest (and jives with his self-portrayal in this book), but is pretty tough given that we just spent half of the memoir diving into his guilt and his feelings about his friend's death. Who is that for, and what is it for? It's not really clear.