Disorientation

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 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 burnings 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 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.