Hua Hsu

Hua Hsu is an Asian-American writer and academic. He is a tenured associate professor of English and director of American Studies at Vassar College and staff writer at The New Yorker. His work includes investigations of immigrant culture in the United States, as well as public perceptions of diversity and multiculturalism. He is the author of A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific. 2Early life A second generation Taiwanese American, Hsu was born in Illinois before moving to Plano, then Richardson, Texas. His family then moved to southern California, then ultimately Cupertino, California, where his father was an engineer; his mother stayed at home with Hua. The family lived in Cupertino from about the time Hua was nine to 18, though his father moved to Taiwan to pursue work and Hua often spent summers and other school vacations there. In Cupertino, Hsu attended high school with Ben Cho, who went on to become a fashion designer.Hsu attended college at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied political science. He graduated in 1999. He next attended Harvard University to study Asian-American literature in graduate school, earning a PhD in the History of American Civilization department (American Studies) in 200