Hua Hsu (born 1977)[1] 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. Previously he taught at Vassar College. 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

A second-generation Taiwanese American, Hsu was born in 1977 in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois[2] before moving to Plano, then Richardson, Texas.[3] His family then moved to southern California,[3] then ultimately Cupertino, California,[4] where his father was an engineer; his mother stayed at home with Hua.[3] The family lived in Cupertino from about the time Hua was nine to 18, though his father moved to Taiwan to pursue work and Hua often spent summers and other school vacations there.[5] In Cupertino, Hsu attended high school with Ben Cho, who went on to become a fashion designer.[6]

Hsu attended college at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied political science.[3] He graduated in 1999.[3] He next attended Harvard University to study Asian-American literature in graduate school,[3] earning a PhD in the History of American Civilization department (American Studies) in 2008.[7] Louis Menand advised his dissertation,[8] entitled "Pacific Crossings: China, the United States, and the Transpacific Imagination."[7]

Career

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (April 2018)

Hsu was a tenured associate professor of English and director of American Studies at Vassar College[9] until 2022 when he became professor of English at Bard College.[10] Since 2017 he has also been a staff writer at The New Yorker.[11] 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.[12]

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.[13][14][15] His 2012 essay for Lucky Peach about suburban Chinatowns was nominated for a 2012 James Beard Award for food writing.[16] He is a board member of the Asian American Writers' Workshop.[17] His book, A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific,[18] was published in June 2016 by Harvard University Press.[19] He was a 2016 National Fellow for the New America Foundation.[20]

Hsu's second book, Stay True: A Memoir, is forthcoming from Doubleday in September 2022. It received a starred review in Publishers Weekly.[21]

Personal life

Hsu lives in Brooklyn.[22] He is married with a son.[3]

Bibliography

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (September 2017)

Books

• Hsu, Hua (2016). A floating Chinaman : fantasy and failure across the Pacific. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP.
• Hsu, Hua (2022). Stay True: A Memoir. New York, New York.: Penguin Random House.

Essays and reporting

• Hsu, Hua (April 18, 2012). "All Hail the Chairmen: Jonathan Olivares's "Taxonomy of Office Chairs"". Los Angeles Review of Books.
• — (September 5, 2012). "Michael K. Williams Reveals His Omar Mix". Vulture.
• — (December 13, 2012). "Wokking the Suburbs". Lucky Peach.
• — (March 7, 2016). "The struggle : Macklemore wrestles with his place in hip-hop". The Critics. Pop Music. The New Yorker. 92 (4): 70–71.[lower-alpha 1]
• — (October 3, 2016). "Bon Iver's new voice". The Critics. Pop Music. The New Yorker.
• — (September 21, 2016). "The Critic Who Convinced Me That Criticism Could Be Art". The New Yorker.
• — (January–February 2009). "The end of White America?". U.S. The Atlantic.
• — (January 4, 2017). "Listening to George Michael in Taiwan". Cultural Comment [web only]. The New Yorker.
• — (April 24, 2017). "Praise songs : Alice Coltrane in Sanskrit". The Critics. Pop Music. The New Yorker. 93 (10): 98–99.[lower-alpha 2]
• — (May 1, 2017). "Legacy media : Kendrick Lamar's sense of debt to those who came before". The Critics. Pop Music. The New Yorker. 93 (11): 74–75.[lower-alpha 3]
• — (September 18, 2017). "Rostam Batmanglij defines his musical identity". Pop Music. The New Yorker.
• — (December 4, 2017). "Forward march : Bjõrk's visions of the future". The Critics. Pop Music. The New Yorker. 93 (39): 62–64.[lower-alpha 4]
• — (May 20, 2019). "Machine yearning : Holly Herndon's search for a new art form for our tech obsessions". The Critics. Pop Music. The New Yorker. 95 (13): 83–84.[lower-alpha 5]
• — (December 9, 2019). "Burial's Search for Fleeting Moments". Pop Music. The New Yorker.
• — (January 6, 2020). "Exclude me in : in the seventes, a group of Asian–American writers decided it was their turn". The Critics. Books. The New Yorker. 95 (43): 58–63.[lower-alpha 6]

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Notes

See also

• Chinese people in New York City
• New Yorkers in journalism
• Taiwanese people in New York City
• The Hanging on Union Square by H. T. Tsiang, whom Hsu refers to in A Floating Chinaman.

References

External links

• Personal site
• Faculty page at Vassar College
• Hua Hsu, "Wokking the Suburbs", Lucky Peach, 2013
• Author page at The Believer
• Author page at The Atlantic
• Author page at New York magazine
• Author page at Slate
• Author page at The Wire
• Author page at The Village Voice
• Author page at Bookforum
• Author page at Grantland

External links

• Personal site
• Faculty page at Vassar College
• Hua Hsu, "Wokking the Suburbs", Lucky Peach, 2013