A dizzying take on the campus novel, on identity & race, and on scholarship in general, Disorientation was at times droll and at others, a spectacle I couldn’t take my eyes away from. I don’t particularly care for Chou’s characters — not Ingrid, not Eunice, not Vivian — but I don’t mean that in a negative way. I meant that they all are, at some level, completely unlikeable and other times, you want to root for them, and then again, at other times, want to completely roll your eyes at their actions. The plot meanders a bit (the book could’ve gotten a good 1/3 of it cut and you wouldn’t miss the missing bit) but overall, an interesting book that tries its best to fit the Paul Beatty model of satire.

3/5

I went into this pretty blind, only knowing it was a genre I love, messy millennial women in academia. Delightfully, this ends up being so much more than that (though that's certainly part of it).

Ingrid is a PhD candidate in East Asian Studies, writing a dissertation about famous Chinese-American poet and local legend Xiao-Wen Chou. However, she didn't choose this topic herself- her mentor and advisor, Michael, "suggested" she write about Chou. What follows is a shocking (but also not shocking) examination of racism, academia, yellowface, layers of oppression, identity, and the politics of being Asian-American in a world of white supremacy. I was blown away by the nuance included at every turn, and while the climax of the story does seem almost too much to believe, I don't doubt it's possible in our society, where racism is perpetuated by white elites.

This is a must read IMO.

Thank you so much to Netgalley for providing me with an ARC.

This book was a lot. From the synopsis I thought I would love it, and while the story started out strong it fell apart about halfway through and then just turned into nonsensical chaos. The characters I started out rooting for turned into idiotic caricatures. The storyline fell all over itself in an attempt to address way way too many social issues. The use of adjectives was overdone and off putting...if one more person slurped, had something ooze from their vagina, or described a weight being lifted from them as a weeks long constipation being released I might have either thrown up or thrown the book in the trash. I had extremely high hopes for this story, but it was too many unnecessary stories in one that left me just wanting to get to the end already. I think the writing was fine, and I may give the author's future works a chance, but this was definitely NOT the book for me.

Disorientation is one of the strongest books I have read this year and I am excited to see how other readers and reading groups will uncover and discuss the themes on ethnicity, under represented identities, racism, and how this is all woven into academia and related contexts without notice. This amazingly intricate, thoughtful and well executed narrative examines the experiences of Ingrid Yang as she works to complete her dissertation on an Asian American poet (who she doesn't even want to study) who finds herself at multiple crossroads as she thinks about her identity and racism, racism and academia, her relationships with her parents, fiance, friends, and academic advisor, Thank you to Penguin Book and NetGalley for the chance to read and review this forthcoming novel.

The narrative deftly weaves in the complex and layered experiences of Ingrid Yang as she is trying to write her dissertation on a famed Asian American poet (someone she doesn’t even want to research!). As Ingrid researches her topic she finds herself immersed in a series of questions, questions about her identities, her relationships with her fiancé, parents, friends, and academic advisor, and about race, racism, and social justice within her academic world. The manner in which the interconnected threads in this book come together is highly satisfying and impressive; I found the tying in and juxtaposition of Eunice and Vivian to be particularly interesting and useful to developing Ingrid and showing how she changed over the course of the story. The narrative was also effective in allowing space for reflection and thought, it did a good job of not telling the reader what to think but instead inviting the reader to think about the events in the book.

This book resonated with me as a I am lecturer in a high profile institution, a place that is and must reconcile it's past connections with slavery and role in perpetuating racism and harm to many groups; I am White, have a PhD and a job that I love but I recognize that it is a privilege to have this identity and to have it without navigating racism and unwelcome and hurtful representations of my identity. I appreciate how honest, and very real, this story was and how unfortunately I know it to be a fair and insightful representation of some academic people, contexts, and experiences. This book really struck a chord with me, I’ll be talking about this book for a while. I consider it a top book I’ve reviewed this year.

I will share my genuine appreciation for the chance to reflect on Elaine Hsieh Chou's work. I will be sharing my review in several places, tagging the author and Penguin books as appropriate and possible, in the coming weeks.
Where to find my review around publication date:
https://www.dont-stop-reading.com/
https://www.instagram.com/pageus_of_books/
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/131395833-meghan-pageus
amazon
B&N
https://twitter.com/PageUs_Meghan
and this one will be listed on some of my lists as a bookshop.org affiliate as book to preorder and to consider for book clubs in particular.

Wow ! I have a lot of feelings about this one. To get this out of the way: I knew going in that this book was centrally critique of racism in academia — I was not mentally prepared for the tone whiplash because this book is a satire, and it is a satire that hits you over the head. An idea is taken to its most extreme conclusion, and the characters react around it in ways that do evoke interesting themes and critiques about race, representation and fetishization in academia and in the US in general. It feels really contemporary, in a good way.

We’re given access to the Ingrid Yang’s perspective, a twenty-nine year old PhD student who for the last eight years has dissected poetry in her university’s East Asian studies department, but because of internalized racism / discomfort / model minority myth, she has never before examined her relationship with whiteness. As the summary states, a revelation during the last dregs of her dissertation work sparks a series of events that calls into question how she sees herself and her institution.

But what I couldn’t get past in this book, despite zany but good bones here, was the very…. juvenile? tone. Yes, plots are conceivable in a funny-sad way, but it was more a question of writing style (not sure how to describe beyond, consciously trying to be funny) in combination with perpetual bewilderment and denial from Ingrid. Ingrid’s choices, like everything else, are exaggerated to an extreme, but they don’t feel fitting to the behavior of an adult, really, and it took something out of it for me. Maybe Ingrid’s inner monologue is slow to accept realities before her eyes as a reflection of how she’s been molded to society’s expectations for so long, and maybe the revelations spelled out are a way to make the points more accessible for some readers, but I can’t help but suspect that the readers interested in the themes of this book will already be many steps ahead of Ingrid’s discoveries, and will tire of being spoon-fed revelations through her. That being said, as despicable as some of our horrible characters were, their dialogue was executed to a tee and felt so believable if this stuff were to go down, so I say great work with those sections.

Personally, I really enjoyed the discussion of dissertation dread, falling into an academic track and making one’s way along as mentors and professors nudge in different directions, until research is rote and not necessarily under one’s own agency. This of course ties in with bigger themes and plot later, but as someone who wrote just an undergrad thesis last year and suffered constant heartburn and anxiety, this is something that drew me to the book, and it’s definitely one thing this book gets right — the author understands and aptly communicates the politics of university departments, funding and, of course, optics. I don’t want to spoil too much by bringing up other specific issues that come up, but I felt they were talked about in really valuable ways. Though I had some issues with it, I would definitely recommend this book to others.

If you like thinking about Asian-American identity, fetishization, representation etc and also kind of whacky reads, or think you’ll get a kick out of some pretty colorful characters and rightfully mocking creepy white men populating the East Asian studies departments, this book is for you! Thank you so much to Penguin Press and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review!

This was the type of book that makes me want to throw it across the room and also never stop reading it. The fact that I read this exclusively on a plane and on a phone helped control the former urge and enable the latter, but my circumstances in no way could have prevented me from laughing, sighing, scoffing, cringing, gasping, and making all manner of disruptive noises out loud. This book really was too much, but it still has this compulsive quality that makes it impossible to stop thinking about, even when the secondhand embarrassment or rage gets to be overwhelming. Going into this not knowing much, not even having reread the blurb, I really spent the read getting slapped in the face repeatedly and I can't say I <i>loved</i> the beginning, but overall, I enjoyed myself seeing Ingrid go through this journey. It's definitely stirred up some feelings inside me and made me reexamine my own relationships with whiteness and my sense of identity.

This book has a LOT going on. Like, what a rollercoaster. Like it’s funny, but also felt heavy, and terrifying?

Ingrid goes through a JOURNEY in this novel. The ending is…WILD.

I thought the writing was excellent. I loved the authors different writing formats in the various chapters. There’s a really great dream courtroom scene that’s so well written and funny.

Some of the dialogue, omg 😂. The ridiculousness. But such great writing. I enjoyed reading this one, even if a lot of it I was like WHAT 😳.

If you like satire, this book is for you.

This book is certainly something... It's satirical, though I didn't realize it going in. We follow Ingrid Yang, a PhD student in East Asian studies who uncovers a conspiracy about the poet she's writing her dissertation on. This book is far-fetched in the best way, yet not too far removed from reality. Chou discusses important topics like institutionalized racism and activism, yet also manages to talk about beauty standards and the fetishization of Asian women. Basically, there's a lot going on in this book in the best way.

*Thank you to Penguin Press and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review*

Thank you to Netgalley for giving me an ARC!

This read was a hot mess.

Read that sentence carefully. This read was a hot mess. Not the book. Just my experience with it.

This is a classic case of “it’s not you, it’s me.”

First of all, I’m definitely not the target audience for this book. I think it’s either New Adult or intended for teenagers who are far more mentally advanced than I am, because I could not, for the life of me, enjoy it. It just wasn’t happening. The narration style and plot points weren’t suited to me at all.

Is this book enjoyable? Objectively, yes. Just not by me. I don’t know if it’s my tastes, my age, my (questionable) maturity or just the genre and subject matter, but whatever it is, it’s not my style.

The plot of this book was actually really appealing from the synopsis. Ingrid Yang is a PhD candidate hoping to finish her dissertation on Xiao-Wen Chou and be done with anything and everything involving East Asian studies. But when she finds a note in the archive that upends everything she’s working for, as well as the lives of everyone around her, it’s safe to say that her entire life is destroyed.

The actual execution of the plot was not as enjoyable. It just felt really pointless and I didn’t see a reason to actually care about any of the events of the book. I don’t think a book needs to be high-stakes and 90% action for me to be engaged, but it definitely should not feel this juvenile.

Especially not when it’s from the point of view of a 29-year-old working toward a doctorate. Which brings me to my next issue: the writing.

The narration of this book was so childish and immature - I think it was meant to come across as comical and slightly clueless, but it mainly just got on my nerves. I find it almost impossible for an adult woman to be so fucking dumb, even if her name is Ingrid Yang and she’s been in college working on the same thing for eight years. Considering how her childhood was described, you’d expect her to have some semblance of a brain cell.

The POV felt like (if it hadn’t involved political perspective and adult subject matters like sex, drugs, racism and abusive relationships) it could have been something out of a middle-grade book. It just felt so exaggerated.

My main issue with the book was just how stupid everything came across. The characters and the plot weren’t far-fetched - in fact, they were very realistic situations - but they were done in a way that just made me roll my eyes and cringe at every sentence. Like I said, I think it was supposed to be humorous, but I couldn’t take it that way.

Ingrid Yang was one of the absolute dumbest characters I have ever read. Sure, her life situation was pretty sucky for most of the book, but she had absolutely no right to whine about it when everything could have been solved if she had a fucking backbone.

Ingrid was the kind of character who tries to avoid conflict, which, yes, is a pretty original and unorthodox style of main character for most books. But she apparently tried to avoid controversial opinions by having no opinions at all. In fact, most of the time it felt like she didn’t have thoughts.

Granted, she got a lot of development over the book. I will give her that. She grew and learned so much.

I just hated her narrative with a burning, cringing passion. Everything about her got on my nerves. Her mindset and thought patterns were hell for me. Maybe it’s because I couldn’t relate to her (except for the Asian-American experience since that’s very widely shared). Maybe I just couldn’t connect to her. But I hated her.

Eunice was enjoyable at first, but I also thought she was extremely hypocritical and could be selfish. She was an interesting character when I first met her, but I eventually just started hating her. She had no layering, little development, and I got over what little amiability I had toward her as a character.

Vivian was by far the best character in the book, which is ironic considering that she started off as the most hated. She was unique and actually had some depth and perspective, which is a lot more than I can say for everyone else. I was actually okay with reading about her. Her development and characterization came out really well for me.

Stephen was such an asshole, in my opinion. I couldn’t deal with him, even when he and Ingrid had a happy relationship. He was just so annoying, so disgusting, and I just couldn’t tolerate his presence on the page.

Lastly, Michael. I hated him. From the beginning to the end. I hate this man with a burning passion that is far beyond what I expected from a book that I thought would elicit nothing but disappointment and eye rolls.

The characters were all pretty much just caricatures of personalities that we all know. They were realistic enough that we would obviously know that they’re real and that everyone will run into people like that, but also so exaggerated that it was ridiculous. I kind of hated how stupid it was.

The best thing about this book was by far the perspective it provided on current issues. It went so deep into racism and political issues and American freedom in a way that I haven’t seen in other books - and who knows, maybe part of that is from the narration style that I hated so much.

This book addressed racism with an honesty and brutal bravery that I have trouble recognizing - it went straight in with the controversy and the questions and all the confusing issues that make politics what they are.

This book addressed whitewashing and yellowface and cultural appropriation and political protests. It went into so much and addressed it all in such a trippy way that I still don’t know what to think. It was blunt and clear and yet confusing as fuck.

Basically, the narrative of this book just fucking exposed America and its academic corruption and racism.

Honestly, I strangely loved the way Ingrid’s perspective went into this shit. It was so honest and yet perplexing that it was realistic. It made really good work of how we see racial issues and American rights and the world of academia, and I don’t really know how to get over it. Considering the fact that I hated almost every minute I read the book, but also enjoyed the ending with a weird amount of satisfaction, I just don’t know how to handle this book.

Maybe I’m too young for this, since it goes into PhD and doctorates and academia life, which naturally are not things that I know anything about. But whatever this book went into, it did a good job of it.

Overall, I don’t know how the hell to convey my opinions about this book.

It was an awful experience for the most part, since I hated the narration and I hated all the characters and I wasn’t into the plot - and those three factors are my most important criteria for books.

But it was also really good. Not in a way that means I enjoyed it, because - obviously - I didn’t. But it was so well-written and went into things with so much depth that it’s really hard to hate it? It was so in-depth and culturally accurate that I have a hard time hating it, just because it was so good in that aspect.

Does that intelligence and honesty make up for how much I hated it? Maybe. I can’t say I would ever want to reread it, but I might actually recommend it to some people if you want to learn more about race and cultural issues.

Or maybe if you need a laugh. It’s not my type of humor and not my type of book, but I can actually really see some people enjoying it.

Whether or not you like this book if you read it, I think it would be really hard to deny that Disorientation does an amazing job of providing national introspection in a very thought-provoking way. Just not the way that I like thinking.

Disorientation is a perfect political /campus satire. Elaine Hsieh Chou skewers academic institutions in this fast moving novel regarding a reluctant doctoral student.

Ingrid is in the 8th year of her dissertation on poet Xiao-Wen Chou - someone and something that she did not have interest in initially and 8 years later still feels quite lukewarm about. She navigates her life by attempting to fit in where ever she is and with whomever she is with. This can prove difficult as a first generation of Taiwanese parents and Ingrid has a lot of people to answer to and she is not able to stand up for herself and stand her ground.

By chance, Ingrid learns her life's work is a fraud - that the father of Chinese poetry is in fact a Caucasian man in disguise. This discovery puts on end everything she and her colleagues know and brings up great questions about race, cultural appropriation, white supremacy and whiteness, and the very heart of campus protesting and activism.

There are a lot of great characters in this novel including her best friend Eunice, firebrand Vivian, her academic boss Michael and of course the very (very!) annoying fiance Stephen. The prose is sharp and comic and delightful. It was a joy to read!

If you like political satire, particularly about race or academic institutions, then this is the book for you! #NetGalley #Disorientation

Thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Press for the ebook. This is such a sharp campus satire. Ingrid, a first generation Taiwanese American, is a PhD student struggling with her dissertation when she finds a tiny clue that she feel she should ignore, but instead pulls on this thread and sends her college into pandemonium. As her academic career smolders, Ingrid also questions her relationships. With her trendy friend Eunice Kim and her academic rival, the campus radical Vivian Vo, with her white fiancée Stephen and, maybe most importantly, with the parents she was never close to as a young child. This is a fun romp that makes its fun by examining some deadly serious issues.

Thank you for the ARC of this one! Chou’s writing chops left me mind blown!

Things I liked:
✨ The political satire. Chou’s language and humor are wicked smart, and she effectively uses exaggeration to skewer white institutional spaces and liberal white supremacy.

✨ Memorable characters fill the pages of this book! MC Ingrid, BFF Eunice, boyfriend Stephen, activist Vivian, professor Michael. The entire cast feels fleshed out, believable, quirky, and memorable. Interesting characters make for interesting fiction!

✨The coming-of-age (or consciousness) of MC Ingrid. Ingrid struggles to come to terms with her Taiwanese identity. In a way, she acts like a chameleon, changing to fit whomever she is dating or whatever her academic advisors need her to be. Ingrid is pressured to conform and manage her emotions to suit the comfort of white people, often as a means of professional survival. Her growth as she becomes more self-aware feels real and raw.

✨The explosive ending! No spoilers, but I loved it.

I found it difficult to review this book because on the surface it’s humorous and rowdy. On a deeper level, it says so much about institutionalized racism. Universities are considered to be among the most liberal institutions in society, yet many scholars of color say they still feel excluded or denied opportunities.

This book follows a young Taiwanese American graduate student researching the father of Chinese American poetry, only to discover that he wasn't who he said he was. It's about the whiteness of higher education, but also about much more: it's about cultural appropriation, the fetishization of Asian American women, the ways that Asian Americans experience academia -- both in the racism they face and the ways that they can be complicit in these same power structures. For all its serious topics, though, this book was also full of humor. It felt like being at a party with a friend who knows everyone there, and can point out everyone's flaws to you with good humor and a knowing wink. This book is thought-provoking, slyly funny, and incisive in its critiques. I loved every moment of it.

brutally honest send up of ivory tower academia - cushioned by lucent socio-political commentary, delivered with compassion and joy.

This is by far one of the best books I've read this year. Helen Hsieh Chou packs SO much into the plot that in other hands it would be unwieldy and pretentious. It's trite, but I laughed, and I cried. I can't wait to see this turned into a movie. Or a miniseries!