This is Fresh Air, I'm Terry Gross.

I've been away from the show for the last few weeks, dealing with a family medical

emergency.

Although I'm back today, I'll be gone again for at least another week.

I'm grateful to everyone on the show for keeping things going, especially the extraordinary

Dave Davies who's been hosting the show while I'm away.

I miss the Fresh Air team, and I miss doing interviews.

I look forward to returning for real soon.

Here's the interview I recorded last Thursday.

When you're a teenager, try to figure out your own identity and how you want to signal

to others who you are.

One way to define yourself is by the music you listen to, or films, TV shows, video

games, videos that you love.

Sometimes, the more esoteric, the better, because it shows off your ability to discover

these things before anyone else, and shows your discerning taste.

My guest Hwashou went through that period, but remained passionate about pop culture.

He's a culture critic at the New Yorker, where he's been a staff writer since 2017.

His new memoir reflects on his teenage and college years, and his complicated search

for identity.

As the son of immigrants from Taiwan, he writes, we can never write in a way that assumed

anyone knew where we were coming from.

There was nothing interesting about our context, neither black nor white, just boring to everyone

...