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Elaine
Hsieh Chou
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Disorientation
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.
Elaine Hsieh Chou
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.
About the author
Elaine Hsieh Chou is a Taiwanese American author and screenwriter from California. Her debut novel DISORIENTATION (Penguin Press / Picador) was a New York Times Editors' Choice Book, an NPR Best Book of 2022 and an NYPL Young Lions Finalist. The novel was optioned by AppleTV+ the same month it was released.
A former Rona Jaffe Graduate Fellow at NYU and NYFA Artist Fellow, her Pushcart Award-winning short fiction appears in Guernica, Black Warrior Review, Tin House Online, Ploughshares, The Atlantic and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the 2023 Fred R. Brown Literary Award. As a writing and workshop instructor, she has taught fiction for NYU, The Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program, Catapult, Accent Society, Kundiman and Tin House.
Her multi-genre short story collection WHERE ARE YOU REALLY FROM is forthcoming from Penguin Press.
The award show by and for funny people.
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