Stay True was published in September of 2022. In addition to describing Hsu's maturation as a young Asian American man, the memoir is centered on the death of Hsu's friend Ken, who was killed while they were both students at Berkeley. In tender detail, Hsu describes both their unlikely bond and his process of coping with the loss of his young friend.
Stay True received critical praise upon its release. Reviewing the book for The New York Times, Jennifer Szalai described it as a "quietly wrenching memoir" and wrote that it is a work "that gathers power through accretion — all those moments and gestures that constitute experience, the bits and pieces that coalesce into a life." Similarly, Lucy Sante, writing for The New York Review of Books, wrote that Hsu is a writer capable of "engaging fully, emotionally as well as intellectually, with every subject."
In January of 2023, Stay True was named as a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in the category of autobiography.
