Summary

One night, Hsu and Ken visited a record store where they examined a deluxe edition of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. They were both obsessed with the song “God Only Knows” and found meaning in “repeated listenings, these memories stacking on top of one another” (86). During his junior year, Hsu moved with Anthony to another condo. Ken planned to start a club called the Multicultural Student Alliance to provide support and community to students of color. Hsu dismissed the organization because it did focus on “tearing the whole rotten system down” (88). He began working at the Richmond Youth Project, a community center for Southeast Asian middle schoolers. Although Hsu felt some differences between himself and his young students, he believed that “Asian American was a messy, arbitrary category, but one that was produced by a collective struggle” (91). During one session, one of the...