Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.

It's Bullseye, I'm Jesse Thorn.

Wash shoe, my next guest is a writer.

His work covers a lot of ground. He's written profiles and reviews in the New Yorker covering artists and performers like Bjork, Bell Hooks, and Sandra O.

He's also a professor of English, with a passion for elevating underappreciated talent in literature.

He wrote his first book, A Floating Chinaman, about the writer H.T. Song.

Song was an undocumented immigrant from China who self-published his books initially, handing out copies around Manhattan.

Lately, Kwa has been writing more reflective work. His new book, Stay True, is a memoir.

In Stay True, shoe looks back on his early 20s, when he was an undergrad at the University of California, Berkeley.

His mom was maybe an hour or so away by car. His dad was overseas in Taiwan, working as an engineer.

In the dorms, he made and lost friends. He writes about road trips with buddies. He shares correspondence with his father.

It's a book about his most intimate relationships and their interrelationship with his Americanness.

It's also a sort of tragic love story. We'll get into all of that in our conversation.

For now, I just want to say Stay True is a really special book.

It's beautifully written, casually insensitive, and spectacularly moving.

I'm really grateful that I got to talk to Vashu about it, so let's get into it.

Who are you? Welcome to Bullseye. It's so nice to get to talk to you.

It's awesome to be here.

I was really excited. Look, we're going to talk about real things in a moment.

But I was just really excited to learn that you grew up as San Francisco Giant's fan.

Oh, yeah, definitely. That's the information. Were you like a Joel Youngblood guy?

I did like Joel Youngblood. I think Mike Kruko was my first favorite giants.

...