Oh my goodness, this one sprawled. But it’s utter genius. I saw at one point that this was being comp’d with Ling Ma’s Severance, but I think a recent book (2021) that better matches the “vibes” here (some light racial horror, some satire of 21st century working life, and truly hilarious writing) would be “Black Buck.”
I loved this book, but the first third definitely felt slow to me, and I enjoyed it best once I kind of let the audiobook wash over me a bit - not to say it’s not worth a close read, but I don’t think every part of the book necessarily demands to be read that way.
Thank you to NetGalley for providing an arc for review.

This book was amazing. I coudn't put it down. It was magical. Higly recommended! The characters, the plots, the writting: wonderful and perfect.

This was a refreshing satire that made me laugh and also want to cry because I could see the plot line actually playing out in the academic world even in all its unrealness.

Wow this was an instant hook from page one. The writing was so intense, it sank its hooks in me and pulled me into the story so quickly. Definitely recommend!

In a collegiate setting, we meet a neurotic, insecure, awkward, wreck of a young East Asian American woman, Ingrid Yang, struggling to complete her dissertation on a Chinese American poet which she has little interest in and even less enthusiasm. She’s also engaged to a rather controlling, detail-oriented white man who is translating a rather titillating tale of Japanese erotica. The cast is rounded out with a confident Korean American “ride or die/partner in crime” bestie, a collegiate competitor who is Ingrid’s nemesis and complete opposite, a set of concerned, loving, and supportive parents, and a supporting cast of very quirky, colorful, and opinionated characters.

The novel is layered – there’s a pervasive (and very satisfying) “mystery” component which twists and turns until the end, cleverly crafted multiple point-of-view commentary on the immigrant and First-Generation American experiences, deep examination on cultural appropriation, multiple facets (including the origins, citations, and legacy) surrounding both male and female Asian stereotypes in academia, from a sexual, social, political perspective, and many other thought-provoking topics including racism, white privilege, discrimination, affirmative action, etc.

With so many ideas represented, this novel could have been a mess of a book; however, the author kept me engaged amid comedic sequences, timely and relevant material, delivered with well-researched and fact-based issues. This is an excellent choice for book club discussions and excellent fodder to promote thought and awareness on a myriad of subjects.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an opportunity to review.

So much was packed into this book and I still wanted more! It was funny and ridiculous, but in a way that required understanding and patience to be truly appreciated. It tackled important topics in a way I hadn't read before. I enjoyed the main character as well. The book was an unforgettable ride of chaos that was always intelligent and never once boring.

this was funny and interesting! the characters and the vibes were really cool and i loved the overall themes of the story. I will definitely read more books from Elaine Hsieh Chou in the future!

I am so glad to see the return of the sharp academic satire. And I am even more glad to see it featuring the experiences of POC in academia. Disorientation is at its heart, a mystery. I loved following Ingrid on her journey as she solved a puzzle, came to numerous realizations about her future and her identity. I look forward to whatever comes next from Elaine Hsieh Chou.

I really enjoyed this book; its conceit is properly absurd, but the writing still manages to be compelling and fun. It is not terribly thought-provoking, but it is an excellent debut.

Micro Review and Illustration by Carolyn Yoo

Elaine Hsieh Chou’s debut novel Disorientation begins with Ingrid Yang, PhD student in her final year at Barnes, struggling to finish her dissertation on renowned Chinese American poet Xiao-Wen Chou. She cycles through a variety of illnesses to avoid meeting with her East Asian Studies advisor Michael Bartholomew, who initially encourages Ingrid to study Xiao-Wen Chou (“the canon”) to get on the tenure track.

Through a series of dizzying, hilarious events, Ingrid discovers a long buried secret that compromises not only her own future but the Barnes institution at large. With the help of her trusty friend Eunice Kim and equally admired and hated rival Vivian Vo, Ingrid inadvertently sets Barnes ablaze (literally!) with her discovery. By the end, nothing about Ingrid’s life remains the same—and she couldn’t be happier.

While the lack of self-reflection on Ingrid’s part prior to these events could be seen as unrealistic, Chou’s choice to have her protagonist undergo a complete reawakening serves the dramatic tension of the novel as a whole. Though a work of fiction, the book is thoroughly researched and many of its conversations feel like accurate recollections of Twitter threads and late-night alcohol-fueled arguments discussing Asian identity and white supremacy.

No one is left spared from critique in Chou’s satire, much to the reader’s delight. Anyone who has experienced the pretension of academia, thought extensively about racial dating preferences, or reveled in takedowns of white institutions will find much to cackle about while reading these pages. But Disorientation shines most in its ability to give Asian American readers an entry point to examine and forgive their own potential hypocrisies.

Bio:

Carolyn Yoo is a Brooklyn-based illustrator, writer, and former Cosmos Book Club lead. Find her latest artwork on Instagram or subscribe to her weekly newsletter on furthering one's creative practice.

Disorientation is an example of satire done perfectly — it’s incredibly funny, ridiculous in an unbelievable way and believable in an infuriating way, and just simply clever and sharp. It surprised and delighted me in all the best ways, and it only gets better as you read on.

The start of this book had me hooked like nobody’s business. A wild goose chase/rabbit hole of procrastination to find this mysterious person leaving notes in research archives.
Then somewhere in the middle, the plot stays stagnant and goes off the rails. The satire of academia’s old-white-men-running-things syndrome was almost too forced. And then end has this big pay off, but it didn’t feel like that. It wasn’t warranted and didn’t feel like that’s what the story had been leading to.
I wanted to like this so much more than I did!

Thank you to Penguin Press for this ARC!

I DNFed this one about 35% of the way through. I found it to be too much of a chore to pick up because I simply did not like the main character. I thought she was too eccentric, maybe? I guess that'd be the right word. It just felt like the author was pushing that too far and I just couldn't get on board with her.

I have often felt that academics take themselves a tad too seriously. Of course, it's hard not to, although not necessarily for the reasons you might think. The vast majority of laborers in academia are underpaid grad students and adjuncts on precarious contracts. Such life is bleak, marred as it is by uncertainty and poverty. No one can escape it. Add to this mixture a profession that, quite unlike any other, has melded work with one's identity as a person, and you get a recipe for depression and depressive books that although valid, after a while begin to feel the same in their conceit.

Enter "Disorientation," a satire about the vagaries of life in academia that manages to be hilarious, relatable, addictive, while delivering some of the most poignant critiques about higher education that I have read in a while. Hsieh Chou's debut is undeniably a fresh voice into a genre that feels weighed down by its own writers' expectations that they had been promised a greatness that now life has failed to deliver. "Disorientation" is nothing of the sort, aided by the framing of its protagonist as someone who landed into academia because she wanted her literature's professor flashy life, but still felt like a stranger to it and could never subsume her identity into the larger notion of being academic.

In addition to the commentary that made it a very relatable read, the plot itself (with its academic secrets and rivalries) was honestly a lot of fun and made this a breeze to go through. For all the skewering of academia and academics, I am not above a good, intellectual mystery and this one delivers on all fronts.

Source: DRC via NetGalley (PENGUIN GROUP, Penguin Pres, The Penguin Press)
Pub. Date: March 22, 2022
Synopsis: Goodreads

Why did I choose to read this book?

I love taking chances on debut novels.
Also, this quote from the synopsis hooked me and caused me to race to NetGalley to see if it was available:

“An uproarious and bighearted satire, alive with sharp edges, immense warmth, and a cast of unforgettable characters, Disorientation is both a blistering send-up of white supremacy in academia, and a profound reckoning of a Taiwanese American woman’s complicity and unspoken rage.”

Here at Angry Angel Books we are all about (1) character investment, (2) the destruction of white supremacy wherever it resides, (3) pissing on the rancid state of academia, (4) spoken and unspoken rage, and (4) satire. Hit me with your best shot, I’m ready.

What is this book about?

This book is about a doctoral student who has been coerced into studying something (someone) for her dissertation by her white advisor in the East Asian studies department and is struggling with being motivated to write. The story unfurls like a flower and each petal shows one of various discourses surrounding Asian American, specifically first generation female Asian American, experience. White supremacy, asian fetishists, societal conditioning and masking of racism, trying to be something you’re not to fit in when you never really will – this book really throws all the ingredients in the pot and makes you eat it in one serving.

What is notable about the story?

This book is difficult to read through my white lens, and I suspect it would be ten times more difficult to absorb if you were an immigrant, a child of immigrants, or of East Asian descent. It doesn’t hide any argument, any conflict – you have to think about everything all at once. If I had to compare it to something, it’s like those crystals you can hang in a window and when the light strikes them, they throw little rainbows everywhere. You think Ingrid’s real problem is her dissertation, and then the light hits parts of her life and you discover that her problems have problems, and they are all around her, pulling her down and making her question who she truly wants to be and who she wants to have in her life. This is a mental/emotional/intellectual struggle that all children of immigrants have to face at some point in their lives, and reading this story helped me understand what it might be like.

Was anything not so great?

A side effect of this kind of story written so well with so much complexity, is that at several points it felt like I was reading a Twitter thread where people were arguing in the replies about who was Asian enough, who had the right to say what was Asian enough, and that was…very tiring. It’s my privilege showing when I say this, because I only have to encounter this when I read diverse books. Real people face this kind of discourse nonstop in their lives online, interpersonally, and inside their own minds. The point here is to make you realize that, I only mention it here because less dedicated readers than myself probably would have put the book down earlier because of this. It’s a downside for sure, but press through. It’s worth it.

What’s the verdict?

A strong 3 stars on Goodreads, Disorientation seems like the kind of book you assign a college seminar course to read and discuss, and less a book that you would pick up at your local book store to read for pleasure. The explorations within are worthwhile, and if you are a white person who wants to become a stronger ally to others, reading this book will widen your view and deepen your understanding. I’ll always recommend a book like this, the world needs more understanding and thoughtful interaction.

Fast paced, suspenseful and often very funny, Disorientation provides great insight and is emotional resonant on matters of race, cancel culture, and academia in our current social landscape.

Disorientation, the debut novel by Elaine Hseih Chou, has been showing up on all of my social media feeds lately as a new found favorite - now I am understanding why. The story of Ingrid Yang's uncovering of a long hidden, controversial secret at Barnes University, as she struggles to complete her PhD on Chinese-American poet Xiao-Wen Chou, is hilarious, exciting, provocative, current, touching and so satisfying. There's so much to unpack here, I think it's a book that is better simply read rather than summarized. In my personal experience as an Asian American (who recently just found out, at the age of 35, she is part Chinese, in addition to Filipino - thank you to my mom's 23andMe results for the new information) I related to so much of Ingrid's experience growing up Asian in a white ass town, what the compulsion to conform feels like, but also how wonderful it can be to embrace your own heritage with age. I'm also a former English major who faced the decision of whether or not to enter academia and felt relieved that, in 2008, I took my advisor's advice "if you aren't coming to me saying you want to get your PhD, then let's look at other options" and steered clear, never wanting to tuck into a stuffy and confusing Office Hours session with a professor in a sweater vest ever again. I love, love loved this book. Many thanks to Penguin Press for the advanced reader copies and please accept my retroactive apology for the delay in sharing this unbiased, honest review.

A hilarious and thought-provoking campus novel.

Disorientation is one of my favorite reads of 2022 this far, a fantastic blend of wry humor, academics, and moral complexity.

Ingrid Yang is many, many year into her dissertation research with very little to show for it, at sea on where to direct her research and preoccupied with writing comical, fan fic style erotica about her fellow archive denizens. But she stumbles onto an academic scandal that changes everything in her world.

After making an alarming discovery about the subject of her research, Ingrid’s life begins to unravel. Everything in her world, from the university she attends to her own sense of self is suddenly not what it once seemed—and Ingrid’s role in what morphs into THE college scandal to beat all college scandals—has wild and far-reaching implications.

At once a comedic campus satire and an immensely thought-provoking meditation on race and identity, Disorientation is the new twist on the campus fiction genre that the subject so desperately needed.

I loved this book. Hands down one of the best things I've read in a minute! Admittedly, it took me a bit to really get into the story and I even took a break from it after reading the first few chapters. But wow, once it got going, this book really took off. Although the main character, Ingrid, initially made me sigh, roll my eyes, and feel rather annoyed while reading Disorientation, over time I saw the part she played in the story. Her growth and learning as the story goes on was very interesting, a great medium through which to raise issues, questions, conflicts, and explore identity. Her inner monologues were also pretty funny at times, and I enjoyed the humor injected around all the blunt truths and criticisms in the book. The variety of personalities that make up the wider cast of characters in Disorientation were also vital to the storytelling and they were all uniquely interesting people in their own ways. Between Vivian's SJW/super woke/activist identity that (from Ingrid's perspective at least) bordered occasionally on the side of elitism to the cringe-y, fetishizing, and appropriative nature of Michael's interest in all things Chinese/Chinese-American, Disorientation truly covered a large range of the conversation around race, ethnicity, culture, diversity, diaspora etc in a sharply reflective and perfectly biting way. And not all the harsh truths and tough conversations were directed at the larger society or people outside of Asian-American communities or only men. That is something I really appreciated about Disorientation. Elaine Hsieh-Chou brought forward topics like the preferential treatment of white men among many Asian-American women that leads to an oftentimes bitter and tense dynamic between Asian-American men and women, which becomes a feedback loop of people pointing at each other saying the other is a "traitor" or the source of the issue. Or the comment about how East Asians are the white people of Asia and how that is evident in American society. This book gives the reader so much and does not slow down once it gets going. Sometimes as I was reading, I had to come up for air and really break down how I felt/what I was thinking as I reacted to the material I was consuming. Such a fun and incredible book to read! The outlandishness of some parts of the plot only added to the enjoyment and makes it a book I really want all my friends to also read so we could talk about it. Superb!

dnf @20%
I was super interested in this based on the synopsis but the writing style didn’t really click with me that well unfortunately. I may have just not been in the right headspace for this type of book so it may be something that I come back to later