Summary

During his first year of college, Hsu lived with two roommates, Paraag and Dave. Hsu sorted his classmates “according to their musical sensibilities” to determine “people who were cool and then people who weren’t” (39). He soon met Ken—a confident, handsome, outgoing Japanese American student from Southern California—and dismissed him as “mainstream” (40). Ken’s parents had lived in the United States for many years; Hsu believed that this endowed Ken with a level of contentment and self-assurance unavailable to children of more recent immigrants. After Ken asked Hsu to help him shop for clothes (Hsu often wore unusual vintage clothing), the young men became friends.

Ken soon “noticed that [Hsu] never really went out… [Hsu] never touched alcohol, but it was mostly because [he] was a snob” (47). Ken and Hsu formed a habit of smoking cigarettes together on a balcony, where...