Hua Hsu
Hua Hsu began contributing to The New Yorker in 2014 and became a staff writer in 2017. He is the author of “A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific” and the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir “Stay True.” He served on the editorial board for the book “A New Literary History of America.” Hsu is currently a professor of literature at Bard College and serves on the executive board of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. He publishes Suspended in Time, a series of zines about music and life.
What Happens After A.I. Destroys College Writing?
The demise of the English paper will end a long intellectual tradition, but it’s also an opportunity to reëxamine the purpose of higher education.
What We’re Reading This Summer: Mega-Reads
New Yorker writers on long, immersive books that are worth the plunge.
Pavement Inspires a Strange, Loving Bio-Pic
The band was willfully ironic and averse to canonization. An aggressively heady new movie it inspired, “Pavements,” thumbs its nose at the epic rock bio-pic.
Our Favorite “Only in New York” Spots
New Yorker writers muse on sui-generis spots around New York City.
Is There Any Escape from the Spotify Syndrome?
The history of recorded music is now at our fingertips. But the streamer’s algorithmic skill at giving us what we like may keep us from what we’ll love.
How Giant Robot Captured Asian America
The magazine explored Asian American culture, without dwelling too much on what that meant.
The Decline of the Working Musician
You used to be able to make a living playing in a band. A new book, “Band People,” charts how that changed.
A Richard Powers Reading List
From the daily newsletter: the aftermath of Venezuela’s disputed election; Eric Adams tries playing it cool; and a surprisingly jovial Reality Winner bio-pic.
Richard Powers on What We Do to the Earth and What It Does to Us
“Playground,” Powers’s new novel, aims to do for the oceans what “The Overstory” did for trees.
A Portrait of Japanese America, in the Shadow of the Camps
An essential new volume collects accounts of Japanese incarceration by patriotic idealists, righteous firebrands, and downtrodden cynics alike.
American Counterculture, Glimpsed Through Zines
Zine-making is a tradition shared by the young and alienated, people enamored with the fringes of culture. Can a museum exhibit capture its essence?
The Makeup Artist Behind Bradley Cooper’s Prosthetic Nose
In the age of C.G.I., the work of effects artists like Kazu Hiro remains meticulously tactile. “I was sort of his canvas” for “Maestro,” Cooper said.
André 3000 Disrupts Our Sense of Time
André Benjamin’s début solo album of deeply soothing instrumental music asks for little beyond our attention.
Why Tupac Never Died
It’s because the rapper’s life and work were a cascade of contradictions that we’re still trying to figure him out today.
What’s in Your Pockets?
For the past five hundred years, their evolution has reflected attitudes about privacy and decorum, gender and power, and what it means to be cool.
How Nam June Paik’s Past Shaped His Visions of the Future
The digital artist was attuned to the rhythms of a changing world. A new documentary shows his struggles to navigate it.
J. Crew and the Paradoxes of Prep
By mass-marketing social aspiration, the brand toed the line between exclusivity and accessibility—and established prep as America’s visual vernacular.
What Conversation Can Do for Us
Our culture is dominated by efforts to score points and win arguments. But do we really talk anymore?
Randall Park Breaks Out of Character
The “Fresh Off the Boat” star made his career in amiable roles, but his directorial début, “Shortcomings,” is full of characters who are, in his word, “shitty” people.
What Happens After A.I. Destroys College Writing?
The demise of the English paper will end a long intellectual tradition, but it’s also an opportunity to reëxamine the purpose of higher education.
What We’re Reading This Summer: Mega-Reads
New Yorker writers on long, immersive books that are worth the plunge.
Pavement Inspires a Strange, Loving Bio-Pic
The band was willfully ironic and averse to canonization. An aggressively heady new movie it inspired, “Pavements,” thumbs its nose at the epic rock bio-pic.
Our Favorite “Only in New York” Spots
New Yorker writers muse on sui-generis spots around New York City.
Is There Any Escape from the Spotify Syndrome?
The history of recorded music is now at our fingertips. But the streamer’s algorithmic skill at giving us what we like may keep us from what we’ll love.
How Giant Robot Captured Asian America
The magazine explored Asian American culture, without dwelling too much on what that meant.
The Decline of the Working Musician
You used to be able to make a living playing in a band. A new book, “Band People,” charts how that changed.
A Richard Powers Reading List
From the daily newsletter: the aftermath of Venezuela’s disputed election; Eric Adams tries playing it cool; and a surprisingly jovial Reality Winner bio-pic.
Richard Powers on What We Do to the Earth and What It Does to Us
“Playground,” Powers’s new novel, aims to do for the oceans what “The Overstory” did for trees.
A Portrait of Japanese America, in the Shadow of the Camps
An essential new volume collects accounts of Japanese incarceration by patriotic idealists, righteous firebrands, and downtrodden cynics alike.
American Counterculture, Glimpsed Through Zines
Zine-making is a tradition shared by the young and alienated, people enamored with the fringes of culture. Can a museum exhibit capture its essence?
The Makeup Artist Behind Bradley Cooper’s Prosthetic Nose
In the age of C.G.I., the work of effects artists like Kazu Hiro remains meticulously tactile. “I was sort of his canvas” for “Maestro,” Cooper said.
André 3000 Disrupts Our Sense of Time
André Benjamin’s début solo album of deeply soothing instrumental music asks for little beyond our attention.
Why Tupac Never Died
It’s because the rapper’s life and work were a cascade of contradictions that we’re still trying to figure him out today.
What’s in Your Pockets?
For the past five hundred years, their evolution has reflected attitudes about privacy and decorum, gender and power, and what it means to be cool.
How Nam June Paik’s Past Shaped His Visions of the Future
The digital artist was attuned to the rhythms of a changing world. A new documentary shows his struggles to navigate it.
J. Crew and the Paradoxes of Prep
By mass-marketing social aspiration, the brand toed the line between exclusivity and accessibility—and established prep as America’s visual vernacular.
What Conversation Can Do for Us
Our culture is dominated by efforts to score points and win arguments. But do we really talk anymore?
Randall Park Breaks Out of Character
The “Fresh Off the Boat” star made his career in amiable roles, but his directorial début, “Shortcomings,” is full of characters who are, in his word, “shitty” people.