Ky-Phong Tran and his family fled to the United States at the end of the Vietnam War when his mother was six months pregnant with him. He was raised on the north side of Long Beach and educated in public schools. His non-fiction has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Stranger's Guide, and Alta Journal, and his fiction has appeared in the anthology Dismantle. He has been named a finalist in short fiction contests from the Asian American Writers Workshop and Narrative Magazine. He was named LBUSD's Teacher of the Year in 2024 and is currently a Professional Artist Fellow with the Arts Council of Long Beach.
Ky-Phong's book recommendation for Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month this year is Stay True: A Memoir by Hua Hsu. “I fell for this book because I could relate to it so many ways; a rarity for an Asian American guy,” says Ky-Phong. “I was already a fan of Hsu from his essays in national magazines, since he wrote about a generation of Asian America that I knew, and I, too, had important formative years living in the Bay Area just after college. The fact that it won the inaugural Pulitzer Prize for memoir/autobiography in 2023 has little to do with how much this book means to me, because it was already in my personal canon of necessary books long before the award.”
Book: Stay True: A Memoir
Author: Hua Hsu
“Stay True is many wonderful things, but most of all, it's a love song to coming-of-age in the 1990's,” notes Ky-Phong. “The heart of the book is Hsu's friendship with his UC Berkeley roommate and his tragic death in a carjacking. At parts a catalog of the influential music of that era – grunge and hip hop – and a window into college life in Berkeley, Stay True stands out for its brutal honesty and beautiful writing.”
He adds, “In the early part of the book, Hsu writes about college life so knowingly that it was like he was still in it. It's raw and fun and funny, and also poignant and painful, too. When he writes about the funeral of his friend and the eulogy he gives, it's so tragic in so many ways, and you come to see that art sometimes has to break our heart before it heals it.“
As a high school English teacher and writer, Ky-Phong is highly attuned to the impact that books can have on our lives. Regarding Stay True, he says, “I hope that readers gain an insight into themselves about the meaning of friends and friendships in their lives. I also hope they can appreciate the skill, precision, and craftsmanship of each line as it builds to images, stories, and personal revelation.”
“Reading is, in the words of Stephen King, ‘telepathy,'” continues Ky-Phong. “By reading, we can be inside both the mind of the author and the characters. Reading teaches us to slow down, imagine, and most of all, empathize.“
You can find Ky-Phong's work online at www.ky-phongtran.com and follow him on Instagram at @ky_phong_tran_author.
