Stay True: A Memoir

Chapter 6 opens with a meditation on gift giving. Hua discusses the “In Memoriam” section of the 1923 issue of L’Année sociologique, written by Mauss and presented in dialogue with his “Essay on the Gift,” which was published in the same volume. Mauss paid tribute to the soldier-scholars who died in World War I, musing about what the future might have looked like if his colleagues had lived: “Mauss projects into a future that never arrived, imagining ‘what this would have become, if there had been no war’ and his colleagues had continued living and working together” (104). The “In Memoriam” was Mauss’s gift to the dead, a way of making them known to future generations of students and scholars.

Hua segues from his thoughts on Mauss to memories of his junior year. Hua’s mother spent more time in Taiwan with her husband during this period. Using prepaid phone cards, Hua probed his parents for information about their early years in the US, particularly about their memories of the Black Panthers and the Yellow Power movement. He told his parents about his activism thinking they would be proud, but instead they urged him to focus on his studies.