out now in paperback
A New york times editors' choice book * NYPL YOUNG LIONS FINALIST * THUrber prize for american humor finalist * SHORTLISTED for the vcu cabell first novelist award * A Best book of 2022 by npr, vogue, jezebel and book riot * malala book club pick * phenomenal book club pick * indie next pick
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 a junk food addiction and stomach pain. When she accidentally stumbles upon a curious note in the Chou archives one afternoon, it looks like 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 her entire life and the lives of those around her. What follows is a roller coaster of mishaps and misadventures, from book burings and OTC drug hallucinations, to hot-button protests and Yellow Peril 2.0 propaganda. 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.
A blistering send-up of privilege and power in America, and a profound reckoning of individual complicity and unspoken rage, in Disorientation, Elaine Hsieh Chou asks who gets to tell our stories—and how the story changes when we finally tell it ourselves.
Selected praise
"hilarious and harrowing . . . a delightful asian american campus novel" — the new york review of books
“The funniest, most poignant novel of the year” —Vogue
“[F]unny and insightful, with plenty to say about art, identity, Orientalism and the politics of academia" — new york times book review
"captivating, irresistible, and intensely readable, and what we ultimately come to literature to find" — chicago review of books
“Disorientation does what great comedies and satires are supposed to do: make you laugh while forcing you to ponder the uncomfortable implications of every punchline" — the washington post
"funny, fearless . . . dives into the maelstrom of topical arguments about race and comes up fighting" — the observer
"Both deeply moving and rivetingly funny, Disorientation is a master class in satire with surprises around every corner" — foreign policy
“A rollicking, whip-smart ride through the hallowed halls of academia” — Harpers Bazaar
“This book has so many stifle-a-strangled-laugh lines you might want to refrain from reading it in a library or a train’s quiet car" — Glamour
“As the best comedy does, Disorientation manages to highlight uncomfortable truths, capture gray areas and hard lines, and resist sliding into easy binaries of heroes and villains” — Vanity Fair
“[S]earing satire . . . Chou details her protagonist’s struggles with dry humor and wit” —Time