United States
![Elaine Hsieh Chou - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B097QBNPRF.jpg)
Disorientation: A Novel
A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE SELECTION * A MALALA BOOK CLUB PICK * AN INDIE NEXT PICK * A FAVORITE BOOK OF 2022 BY NPR AND BOOK RIOT * A MUST-READ MARCH 2022 BOOK BY TIME, VANITY FAIR, EW AND THE CHICAGO REVIEW OF BOOKS * A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2022 BY GOODREADS, NYLON, BUZZFEED AND MORE
A Taiwanese American woman's coming-of-consciousness ignites eye-opening revelations and chaos on a college campus in this outrageously hilarious and startlingly tender debut novel.
Twenty-nine-year-old PhD student Ingrid Yang is desperate to finish her dissertation on the late canonical poet Xiao-Wen Chou and never read about "Chinese-y" things again. But after years of grueling research, all she has to show for her efforts are junk food addiction and stomach pain. When she accidentally stumbles upon a curious note in the Chou archives one afternoon, she convinces herself it's her ticket out of academic hell.
But Ingrid's in much deeper than she thinks. Her clumsy exploits to unravel the note's message lead to an explosive discovery, upending not only her sheltered life within academia but her entire world beyond it. With her trusty friend Eunice Kim by her side and her rival Vivian Vo hot on her tail, together they set off a roller coaster of mishaps and misadventures, from book burnings and OTC drug hallucinations, to hot-button protests and Yellow Peril 2.0 propaganda.
In the aftermath, nothing looks the same to Ingrid-including her gentle and doting fiancé, Stephen Greene. When he embarks on a book tour with the super kawaii Japanese author he's translated, doubts and insecurities creep in for the first time… As the events Ingrid instigated keep spiraling, she'll have to confront her sticky relationship to white men and white institutions-and, most of all, herself.
For readers of Paul Beatty's The Sellout and Charles Yu's Interior Chinatown, this uproarious and bighearted satire is a blistering send-up of privilege and power in America, and a profound reckoning of individual complicity and unspoken rage. In this electrifying debut novel from a provocative new voice, Elaine Hsieh Chou asks who gets to tell our stories-and how the story changes when we finally tell it ourselves.
A Taiwanese American woman's coming-of-consciousness ignites eye-opening revelations and chaos on a college campus in this outrageously hilarious and startlingly tender debut novel.
Twenty-nine-year-old PhD student Ingrid Yang is desperate to finish her dissertation on the late canonical poet Xiao-Wen Chou and never read about "Chinese-y" things again. But after years of grueling research, all she has to show for her efforts are junk food addiction and stomach pain. When she accidentally stumbles upon a curious note in the Chou archives one afternoon, she convinces herself it's her ticket out of academic hell.
But Ingrid's in much deeper than she thinks. Her clumsy exploits to unravel the note's message lead to an explosive discovery, upending not only her sheltered life within academia but her entire world beyond it. With her trusty friend Eunice Kim by her side and her rival Vivian Vo hot on her tail, together they set off a roller coaster of mishaps and misadventures, from book burnings and OTC drug hallucinations, to hot-button protests and Yellow Peril 2.0 propaganda.
In the aftermath, nothing looks the same to Ingrid-including her gentle and doting fiancé, Stephen Greene. When he embarks on a book tour with the super kawaii Japanese author he's translated, doubts and insecurities creep in for the first time… As the events Ingrid instigated keep spiraling, she'll have to confront her sticky relationship to white men and white institutions-and, most of all, herself.
For readers of Paul Beatty's The Sellout and Charles Yu's Interior Chinatown, this uproarious and bighearted satire is a blistering send-up of privilege and power in America, and a profound reckoning of individual complicity and unspoken rage. In this electrifying debut novel from a provocative new voice, Elaine Hsieh Chou asks who gets to tell our stories-and how the story changes when we finally tell it ourselves.
Editorial Reviews
Chapter 1 The Curious Note
On September ninth, Ingrid Yang could be found cramped over a desk, left foot fallen asleep, right middle finger bruised from writing. She had Xiao-Wen Chou on the mind, so much so that his allusions and alliterations seemed to spill from her every orifice: ears, mouth, nose, vagina. She was chewing at the ends of her hair, then sniffing the paintbrush-like bunches, before scratching at the papery patches of eczema on her ankles. Her eyes were pink veined and sore from having slept three hours the previous night, punctuated by unnecessary trips to the bathroom. She simply sat on the toilet with her eyes closed, nothing going out of, or into, her body.
Even on the occasions she did manage to sleep through the night, Ingrid was plagued by a constant, pinching pain in her stomach. Sometimes she imagined, hopefully, that she was developing ulcers. No one could fault her for failing her dissertation because of stomach ulcers, could they? Pneumonia, then? What about mono? But how to contract these illnesses was another question entirely. There was always the black market-or perhaps she simply had to attend an undergrad frat party.
Pulling her laptop close, she searched "how to contract mono," followed by "top ten deathly illnesses."
No, Ingrid Yang was not doing well.
She was twenty-nine years old and in mounting debt from her undergraduate degree. Four years ago, she had passed her comprehensive exams and started her dissertation. This year, the eighth and final year of her PhD, her funding would run out-an unhappy situation in any circumstance, but compounded by the fact that her student loan deferral was expiring. Somehow, in spite of all this financial doom and gloom, this was also the year she had to produce two hundred fifty pages on Xiao-Wen Chou. And not just any two hundred fifty pages-they had to be shockingly original and convincing! Enough to pass muster with her exacting advisor and an even more exacting dissertation committee. Enough to secure her the prestigious postdoc fellowship created in Xiao-Wen Chou's name.
But after hundreds of hair-pulling hours spent at the archive, all she had accomplished was fifty pages of scrambled notes on Chou's use of enjambment. Plus an addiction to antacids.
Make no mistake, it wasn't as though she hadn't tried. She had come up with ideas of her own! Chou's poetic sprawl representing the eternal inner conflict between eastern selflessness and western individuality. Assimilation int...
On September ninth, Ingrid Yang could be found cramped over a desk, left foot fallen asleep, right middle finger bruised from writing. She had Xiao-Wen Chou on the mind, so much so that his allusions and alliterations seemed to spill from her every orifice: ears, mouth, nose, vagina. She was chewing at the ends of her hair, then sniffing the paintbrush-like bunches, before scratching at the papery patches of eczema on her ankles. Her eyes were pink veined and sore from having slept three hours the previous night, punctuated by unnecessary trips to the bathroom. She simply sat on the toilet with her eyes closed, nothing going out of, or into, her body.
Even on the occasions she did manage to sleep through the night, Ingrid was plagued by a constant, pinching pain in her stomach. Sometimes she imagined, hopefully, that she was developing ulcers. No one could fault her for failing her dissertation because of stomach ulcers, could they? Pneumonia, then? What about mono? But how to contract these illnesses was another question entirely. There was always the black market-or perhaps she simply had to attend an undergrad frat party.
Pulling her laptop close, she searched "how to contract mono," followed by "top ten deathly illnesses."
No, Ingrid Yang was not doing well.
She was twenty-nine years old and in mounting debt from her undergraduate degree. Four years ago, she had passed her comprehensive exams and started her dissertation. This year, the eighth and final year of her PhD, her funding would run out-an unhappy situation in any circumstance, but compounded by the fact that her student loan deferral was expiring. Somehow, in spite of all this financial doom and gloom, this was also the year she had to produce two hundred fifty pages on Xiao-Wen Chou. And not just any two hundred fifty pages-they had to be shockingly original and convincing! Enough to pass muster with her exacting advisor and an even more exacting dissertation committee. Enough to secure her the prestigious postdoc fellowship created in Xiao-Wen Chou's name.
But after hundreds of hair-pulling hours spent at the archive, all she had accomplished was fifty pages of scrambled notes on Chou's use of enjambment. Plus an addiction to antacids.
Make no mistake, it wasn't as though she hadn't tried. She had come up with ideas of her own! Chou's poetic sprawl representing the eternal inner conflict between eastern selflessness and western individuality. Assimilation int...
Readers Top Reviews
Elizabeth Ann Wag
The story revolves around acquiring a Ph.D. In the literary fields at a fictitious liberal arts college. A young Asian woman is writing about a Chinese poet who has endowed his literature to the college. As she proceeds to investigate the poet startling findings regarding his background arise. Also she encounters timely issues regarding white vs. Asian diversity. I found the book a bit mixed in what it was trying to achieve. But for those familiar with academia, the pressures of writing a dissertation are well described.
WINTHROP SMITHLin
If only I could have dealt with the narrator, if only the serious points hadn't been coated with artificial sweeteners, if only the White, Yellow, had been great, not black and white keys in a minor pitch, if only I couldn't picture the movie, the TV series, the Motel 6, and 'We'll leave the light on for you,' if only there were knives, forks, in place of spoons.
happy camperWINTH
I really enjoyed this book. Well, "enjoy" may not be the right word. I found the satire effective and funny, at the same time that it felt real and uncomfortable. I had difficulty accepting how clueless Ingrid was at the beginning, thought it a little unbelievable that she could be that 'unawake.' However, all the characters came to life, the plot was clever, the university setting funny. I did feel that the book could have benefitted from tighter editing, but I read and loved every page, thought it was well written, witty, insightful, important. Thank you Ms. Chou!
Hannahhappy campe
I really enjoyed this book. It was a unique perspective with witty, dark humor. You follow the main character through her own realizations about herself, her worldview, and just how f***ed up society is towards any POC. It rarely knew where the story was going, which was nice to keep me invested in the ending. I liked the ending even if it wasn't the ending I was hoping for. All in all, I would recommend this book to those that like to read a unique, yet relatable story about finding yourself.
VickyHannahhappy
I loved this book so much, I'm breaking my nearly decade-long moratorium on writing-reviews to share my thoughts on it. Disorientation is hilarious and clever and impressively efficient, packing in an incredible range of commentary on how racism manifests within individuals, groups, institutions like academia, and society at large, but written with such humor that it never feels instructional. Complete with multiple mysteries and unexpected fun spy/thriller elements, Disorientation is brimming with hijinks to keep the reader's interest piqued while also slyly introducing many to the difficult experience of assimilation. As a 30-something Taiwanese American woman myself, nearly all of Ingrid's experiences felt familiar despite it being satire, from the seemingly smaller academic-related microaggressions (stereotyping by teachers and students in elementary school, accusations by teachers in high school of plagiarism, pressure by professors in college to choose East Asian-centric projects, etc etc), to the much larger racist transgressions (harassment, fetishization, self-hatred). Chou captures so well the nuances of being objectified on so many levels, and deftly weaves those details into Ingrid's experiences with modern day identity politics, dating, and academia in a uniquely biting, authentic, and refreshing style. Chou's quick and brutally honest observations paired with the twists-and-turns-filled amateur detective storyline means Disorientation never feels too heavy to put down, nor too dense to follow, and if anything, so perfectly captures the complexity with which life plays out when wrestling with questions about race and identity and the cost of choosing your own narrative. Disorientation is a fantastic read and I look forward to what Chou writes next!
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter 1 The Curious Note
On September ninth, Ingrid Yang could be found cramped over a desk, left foot fallen asleep, right middle finger bruised from writing. She had Xiao-Wen Chou on the mind, so much so that his allusions and alliterations seemed to spill from her every orifice: ears, mouth, nose, vagina. She was chewing at the ends of her hair, then sniffing the paintbrush-like bunches, before scratching at the papery patches of eczema on her ankles. Her eyes were pink veined and sore from having slept three hours the previous night, punctuated by unnecessary trips to the bathroom. She simply sat on the toilet with her eyes closed, nothing going out of, or into, her body.
Even on the occasions she did manage to sleep through the night, Ingrid was plagued by a constant, pinching pain in her stomach. Sometimes she imagined, hopefully, that she was developing ulcers. No one could fault her for failing her dissertation because of stomach ulcers, could they? Pneumonia, then? What about mono? But how to contract these illnesses was another question entirely. There was always the black market-or perhaps she simply had to attend an undergrad frat party.
Pulling her laptop close, she searched "how to contract mono," followed by "top ten deathly illnesses."
No, Ingrid Yang was not doing well.
She was twenty-nine years old and in mounting debt from her undergraduate degree. Four years ago, she had passed her comprehensive exams and started her dissertation. This year, the eighth and final year of her PhD, her funding would run out-an unhappy situation in any circumstance, but compounded by the fact that her student loan deferral was expiring. Somehow, in spite of all this financial doom and gloom, this was also the year she had to produce two hundred fifty pages on Xiao-Wen Chou. And not just any two hundred fifty pages-they had to be shockingly original and convincing! Enough to pass muster with her exacting advisor and an even more exacting dissertation committee. Enough to secure her the prestigious postdoc fellowship created in Xiao-Wen Chou's name.
But after hundreds of hair-pulling hours spent at the archive, all she had accomplished was fifty pages of scrambled notes on Chou's use of enjambment. Plus an addiction to antacids.
Make no mistake, it wasn't as though she hadn't tried. She had come up with ideas of her own! Chou's poetic sprawl representing the eternal inner conflict between eastern selflessness and western individuality. Assimilation into American society in Chou's poetry. The theme of familial deference in Chou's poetry. Chou's poetry and the impossibility of cultural translation. Chou's poetry and the longing for irretrievably lost motherland and mother tongue, etc.
The problem was that some other scholar had, of course, already written about it. No other Chinese American poet had been so widely read in America, had been so consistently analyzed and reprinted year after year. The so-called Chinese Robert Frost was taught to students in high schools and colleges all across the country (and occasionally in advanced middle school classes). In every bookstore and library, a good twelve inches of space were devoted to his prolific work. Even those who wanted nothing to do with literature, who could not tell you Chou's name much less how to spell it, had nonetheless come into contact with his poems. In restaurants, dentist offices and middle-class homes, his quotations adorned boxes of tea, wall decorations and watercolor calendars. Xiao-Wen Chou was loved and respected-more so after he passed away from pancreatic cancer seven years ago.
What could Ingrid possibly offer on the late canonical poet no one else had? She had memorized Chou's poems backwards and forwards, riffled through innumerable archive boxes, worn out her copy of his biography, read incomprehensible secondary sources, read them a third time. She had even attended a pricey international conference in the hopes of gently plagiarizing some Argentinian or Swedish scholar's paper. When she was still a TA, she had surreptitiously assigned her undergrads essay prompts that fed directly into her own research. She had let her other interests fall to the wayside, not to mention healthy eating and exercise. She had postponed planning her wedding for another year. From the moment she woke up to the moment she tried to sleep, Chouian sonnets, villanelles, odes...
On September ninth, Ingrid Yang could be found cramped over a desk, left foot fallen asleep, right middle finger bruised from writing. She had Xiao-Wen Chou on the mind, so much so that his allusions and alliterations seemed to spill from her every orifice: ears, mouth, nose, vagina. She was chewing at the ends of her hair, then sniffing the paintbrush-like bunches, before scratching at the papery patches of eczema on her ankles. Her eyes were pink veined and sore from having slept three hours the previous night, punctuated by unnecessary trips to the bathroom. She simply sat on the toilet with her eyes closed, nothing going out of, or into, her body.
Even on the occasions she did manage to sleep through the night, Ingrid was plagued by a constant, pinching pain in her stomach. Sometimes she imagined, hopefully, that she was developing ulcers. No one could fault her for failing her dissertation because of stomach ulcers, could they? Pneumonia, then? What about mono? But how to contract these illnesses was another question entirely. There was always the black market-or perhaps she simply had to attend an undergrad frat party.
Pulling her laptop close, she searched "how to contract mono," followed by "top ten deathly illnesses."
No, Ingrid Yang was not doing well.
She was twenty-nine years old and in mounting debt from her undergraduate degree. Four years ago, she had passed her comprehensive exams and started her dissertation. This year, the eighth and final year of her PhD, her funding would run out-an unhappy situation in any circumstance, but compounded by the fact that her student loan deferral was expiring. Somehow, in spite of all this financial doom and gloom, this was also the year she had to produce two hundred fifty pages on Xiao-Wen Chou. And not just any two hundred fifty pages-they had to be shockingly original and convincing! Enough to pass muster with her exacting advisor and an even more exacting dissertation committee. Enough to secure her the prestigious postdoc fellowship created in Xiao-Wen Chou's name.
But after hundreds of hair-pulling hours spent at the archive, all she had accomplished was fifty pages of scrambled notes on Chou's use of enjambment. Plus an addiction to antacids.
Make no mistake, it wasn't as though she hadn't tried. She had come up with ideas of her own! Chou's poetic sprawl representing the eternal inner conflict between eastern selflessness and western individuality. Assimilation into American society in Chou's poetry. The theme of familial deference in Chou's poetry. Chou's poetry and the impossibility of cultural translation. Chou's poetry and the longing for irretrievably lost motherland and mother tongue, etc.
The problem was that some other scholar had, of course, already written about it. No other Chinese American poet had been so widely read in America, had been so consistently analyzed and reprinted year after year. The so-called Chinese Robert Frost was taught to students in high schools and colleges all across the country (and occasionally in advanced middle school classes). In every bookstore and library, a good twelve inches of space were devoted to his prolific work. Even those who wanted nothing to do with literature, who could not tell you Chou's name much less how to spell it, had nonetheless come into contact with his poems. In restaurants, dentist offices and middle-class homes, his quotations adorned boxes of tea, wall decorations and watercolor calendars. Xiao-Wen Chou was loved and respected-more so after he passed away from pancreatic cancer seven years ago.
What could Ingrid possibly offer on the late canonical poet no one else had? She had memorized Chou's poems backwards and forwards, riffled through innumerable archive boxes, worn out her copy of his biography, read incomprehensible secondary sources, read them a third time. She had even attended a pricey international conference in the hopes of gently plagiarizing some Argentinian or Swedish scholar's paper. When she was still a TA, she had surreptitiously assigned her undergrads essay prompts that fed directly into her own research. She had let her other interests fall to the wayside, not to mention healthy eating and exercise. She had postponed planning her wedding for another year. From the moment she woke up to the moment she tried to sleep, Chouian sonnets, villanelles, odes...
