disorientation

"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." (taken from goodreads)

disorientation by elaine hsieh chou is one of the best books i've read so far this year. 

i originally picked up this book because of the cover's pretty pastel colors and its focus on an asian american woman studying english literature (just like me). however, i was absolutely enthralled with chou's debut novel and am already impatiently awaiting her next publication. 

considering this novel is satire, most of the characters are established as hyperbolic versions of common stereotypes surrounding asian culture and identities. ingrid is the asian girl who wants to be white. vivian is the woke asian girl. stephen is a classic case of a white man with an asian fetish. similarly, michael is the white guy who commodifies asian culture. the only character that i found difficult to place is eunice as she doesn't fit within the tight confines of specific identities and roles like the other characters. i would even argue that she is the least satirized. nevertheless, as the plot unfolds the characters start to become more three-dimensional, complex, and multi-layered, expanding beyond the caricatures that they originally embodied. 

although from the short description ingrid sounds insufferable, i really loved her. she is portrayed in the beginning of the book to be heavily flawed in both her self-perception as an asian woman but also in her perception of marginalized communities. she is very unlikable, but that's the point. chou places her in the absolute perfect position to undergo extreme growth, and she doesn't disappoint. due to a cataclysmic event surrounding the focus of her dissertation, ingrid is forced to undergo a journey of self, uncovering who she is outside the parameters of whiteness. while there are terrible characters placed in opposition to ingrid as the main character, the main antagonist of disorientation is not a person, but a common phenomenon amongst people of color. internalized racism. it is the big bad of this book, a monstrous entity that was born of a childhood full of xenophobic micro-aggressions and the human instinct to survive. now this may be a bit of a bold assertion, but chou's portrayal of ingrid throughout the book is some of the best character development i have ever read. by the end of the novel, ingrid at the beginning of the story is nowhere similar to the ingrid at the end. going on this journey with her, i had never felt more proud. 

the characters that surround ingrid are also interesting, specifically vivian. despite both characters being asian women getting their phd in literature, there is no solidarity amongst the two. vivian's elitism causes her to look down on ingrid for playing into white systems and people, while ingrid's ignorance categorizes vivian as a confrontational social justice warrior. however, i find that vivian represents the more simple-minded aspects of social justice. rather than promoting the education of others vivian is blatantly judgemental and mentally places herself as superior to people who are not on the same level of "wokeness" as her. therefore, she see doesn't see ingrid as a victim of white institutions but that she is just as bad.

another relationship that i want to talk about is ingrid's dynamic with her fiance, stephen. he's a self-proclaimed feminist (eye-roll) and a connoisseur of asian culture. in reality, he's a professional mansplainer with an asian fetish. and once ingrid uncovers these ugly facets of the man she loves, she is forced to navigate the true nature of their relationship. she starts to question whether stephen truly loves her or if he merely drew ingrid's name out of an asian girlfriend lottery. however, it's an impossible conclusion to reach and yet she can't stop thinking about it. i have to applaud chou for the authenticity in which she illustrates "yellow fever," a relatively modern discourse surrounding the problematic components of racial preferences 

“If she chose to stay with him and hold on to her sanity, she'd have to...accept her own objectification. She'd be split apart, never certain if the submissive and docile figure in the mirror was a reflection of who she really was, or the ghostly effect of someone telling her her entire life: this is who you are, this is all you can ever be.”