Stay True: A Memoir

Chapter 8 describes Hua’s final year at Berkeley. The university offered Ken’s friends counseling at the start of the fall term, but Hua chose to cope with his grief alone. To that end, he rejected his old routines in favor of new ones. Occasionally, Hua tagged along to bars with members of fraternities, but his thoughts always returned to Ken. Hua wrote to Ken in his journal, telling him about all the things he was missing, including a political science class with an inspiring professor. Hua attended the professor’s office hours every week after becoming his advisee. Meanwhile, Hua’s relationship with Mira began to unravel as he grew increasingly withdrawn. Hua embraced Ken’s interest in the San Diego Padres and immersed himself in local and national news stories about hate crimes. He proposed a thesis on representations of race in American films, exploring ideas he and Ken spent many nights discussing. Impressed with Hua’s first essay, his advisor encouraged him to consider graduate school at New York University.

Beyond academic work, Hua filled his time with extracurriculars, notably, tutoring prisoners at San Quentin. Hua’s students never discussed their crimes, instead focusing on life outside prison and their families.