One Book One BART: Thank you for reading along with us! Stay tuned for our Fall '23 club

Thank you for reading along with us for our first book club! 

On Wednesday, August 2, we wrapped up One Book One BART's Summer '23 club with a virtual author talk with Hua Hsu, author of the first book club selection and Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, "Stay True," and acclaimed writer and thinker Jeff Chang. Watch a recording of the talk below.

Stay tuned for the launch of our next book club on Monday, September 18, 2023. 

The next book selection is Oakland-based author Margaret Sexton Wilkerson's "On the Rooftop." Reese Witherspoon called the novel, set in San Francisco's Fillmore District, "an utterly original and brilliant story."

For updates on all things One Book One BART, check this page, and join our mailing list by visiting BART’s Profile Center and adding your information. On step 3 – “Manage Subscriptions” – click the caret next to “Other” and check the One Book One BART box. 

Questions? Ideas? Suggestions? Email [email protected]. 

We look forward to reading with you! 

One Book One BART Summer '23 Club 

Below you will find an archive of the One Book One BART Summer '23 program

Reading while you ride is just one of the benefits of taking BART, and that’s why we’ve launched One Book One BART – our first ever book club for riders! 

The book club will feature a constellation of happenings – an author talk, a train read-in, and more. We intend to host two clubs a year, in Spring and Winter. Bookmark this page for reading guides, upcoming events, details about the official book selection, and a list of independent Bay Area bookstores that are easily accessible by BART.  

Happy reading, riders.  

And now, it’s time to announce our first official selection…"STAY TRUE" by Hua Hsu (Doubleday).  

Set in 1990s Berkeley, "STAY TRUE" is a bracing coming-of-age story about grief, the nature of friendship, the search for self, the plurality of the immigrant experience, and the solace that can be found through music and literature. "STAY TRUE" recently won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Memoir. 

About the book: 

May 17, 4pm to 6pm – Official One BART, One Book Kickoff at Rockridge Station 

• Meet BART staff and local bookstore/library partners at Rockridge Station for an afternoon of literary-themed discussions, special merch giveaways and more. Don’t have your book yet? You’ll be able to purchase a copy at the event.   

WHERE TO FIND THE OFFICIAL BOOK SELECTION 

You can find "STAY TRUE" at local libraries and on the free Libby app. "STAY TRUE" is also available as an audiobook through Audible and audiobooks.com.   

If you’d like to purchase a copy, you can find "STAY TRUE" at many local bookstores. We’ve partnered with the following BARTable bookstores to offer a 20% discount on the title if you show your BART ticket or Clipper card:

• Moe’s Books – Downtown Berkeley Station 
• Revolution Books – Downtown Berkeley Station 
• Reasonable Books – Lafayette Station 
• Orinda Books – Orinda Station 
• Banter Bookshop – Fremont Station
• Folio Books – 24th St/Mission Station 
• Books on B – Order online with promo code “BART” to receive the discount and free shipping (Books on B’s storefront in Hayward is temporarily closed)  

Purchase a copy of "STAY TRUE" online from the publisher here. An ebook edition is available from many local libraries and on the Kindle Store.  

GUIDED READING QUESTIONS

We created guided reading questions for each chapter. To follow along as you read, visit this page. 

ABOUT AUTHOR HUA HSU

Hua Hsu is a staff writer at The New Yorker and a professor of literature at Bard College. Hsu serves on the executive board of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. He was formerly a fellow at the New America Foundation and the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center at the New York Public Library. He lives in Brooklyn with his family.

A note from Hua Hsu:

Being the inaugural selection for One BART, One Book is such an honor. My memoir, Stay True, is largely set in the Bay Area in the nineteen-nineties. It’s a story of youth, friendship, and exploration—of stepping into the world at your own pace. I grew up in the South Bay and I have fond memories of taking the BART for a summer job in Berkeley back when I was in high school. I always carried a book with me, but I never got much reading done. When you’re young, your sense of the world is limited to your neighborhood, maybe your hometown, and I would spend the whole ride looking out the window, wondering what all these different cities were like. I stared at the map, memorizing the names of all the cities and stops between Fremont and Berkeley. In the mid-nineties, when I attended college at Berkeley, BART was how I got to San Francisco for record shops (24^th St Mission) and concerts (Montgomery St), Halloween parties (16^th St Mission) and summer jobs, the simple thrill of being able to eat burritos in a different area code. One year, thousands of high school and college students took the BART from throughout the Bay Area to meet up in Concord to demonstrate for more funding for our schools. That morning, each car along the train transformed into a classroom and a community, as we all overcame our differences and shared visions of a better future. I was no longer looking out the window, but at a new world coming into focus in front of my eyes.

QUESTIONS?