Summer Reading

Every incoming Colgate class participates in the tradition of a shared summer reading.

 

2026 Selection

Stay True: A Memoir

Stay True: A Memoir
Hua Hsu

Stay True won both the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Memoir or Autobiography and the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award in Autobiography. Hsu is a staff writer at The New Yorker and Professor of Literature at Bard College, and the author of A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific and publishes Suspended in Time, a series of zines about music and life.

With a blend of humor and hard-earned insight, the memoir demonstrates the capacity to overcome preconceptions and to find commonalities across difference. As it tracks the relationship of two students at UC-Berkeley in the 1990s, Stay True explores the spectrum of emotions that accompany one’s formative years, from the monotonous to the thrilling, from sorrow to joy. 

The Community Reads Committee, composed of faculty, staff, and student representatives, stewarded the selection of the text.
 

Accessing Your Copy

Incoming students have free access to a digital copy of the shared summer read: Stay True: a Memoir by Hua Hsu.

Instructions

You will automatically receive an email from Vitalsource with an access code and instructions to redeem your digital copy. You may also follow these instructions:

  1. Create an account using your Colgate email at bookshelf.vitalsource.com.
  2. On the Home Shelf, click REDEEM code.
  3. Add your redemption code in the code box and click Redeem.
  4. Your library will update with your new book. Refreshing your library may take a few minutes.
  5. Click the book cover to begin reading.

Please go to support.vitalsource.com and click contact us for any technical questions related to VitalSource Bookshelf.

Summer Assignment

Due: Wednesday, August 5

Submit your assignment

Assignment Prompt: Write an Introduction Letter

After you read Stay True, write a letter introducing yourself to your FSEM instructor and dean. 

In approximately 1,000 words, answer the following questions, in any order that works most effectively for how you wish to present yourself: 

  • What would you like your FSEM instructor and dean to know about you and your hopes or concerns as you enter college?
  • What resources will you need to thrive academically, socially, and physically, in terms of overall wellness, in your new community?
  • Regarding your reading of Stay True, what will you be most interested in talking about when you arrive on campus?
  • Are there themes or passages you’ll want to raise for discussion, or hope others might ask you about?

Write your letter in first person (use “I”) and address it “To my new FSEM instructor and dean,” and then allow them to really hear your voice and thinking. 

Do not use AI to create any of your letter or to analyze or summarize Stay True. At Colgate, using generative AI is prohibited in courses unless your professor explicitly allows it for particular purposes. Focus on sharing content in your letter that is unique to you rather than trying to produce a perfectly polished text; please use no editing tools beyond standard spelling and grammar check. 

We recommend that you write your letter in a separate program and then copy-paste it into the submission form. If you have trouble accessing the submission form, please contact ITS at itshelp@colgate.edu or 315-228-7111. 

If you have other logistical questions, please contact Laura Billings, academic department coordinator for the FSEM program and the Division of University Studies, at lcbillings@colgate.edu or 315-228-7807.

About the Community Reads Program

This is the first opportunity for new students to engage with the practice of the liberal arts — engaging in dialogue with faculty and staff on questions that transcend disciplinary interests and require independent analysis. Through these conversations, which incorporate multiple perspectives, students synthesize a coherent understanding of human experience. The shared Community Read also provides a foundation for a variety of related events throughout your first year at Colgate.

In addition, your responses to the summer reading will provide a way to introduce yourself to your faculty adviser (your First-Year Seminar instructor) and administrative dean so that they can get to know you better.