Disorientation, published in 2022, is Elaine Hsieh Chou’s debut novel. In the past, I have read a number of delightful satires that address the politics of academia, and this novel attempts to update the storyline to reflect today’s university life roiled by current political and social unrest. Ingrid Yang is an Asian-American who is an eighth year Ph.D candidate desperately trying (and failing) to complete her dissertation. Her topic is a Chinese-American poet, Xiao-Wen Chou, who has been described as a Chinese Robert Frost. The problem is that Yang has been forced by her advisor to write about him, despite her not being enthused about his poetry or the man himself.

The book’s opening half humorously delights as the reader is charmed by its bumbling lead character. Her insecurities and desire to fit into the politics of a mostly White university provides the author with many juicy topics to tackle. As Yang delves deeper into Xiao-Wen Chou’s life, she discovers that the poet is not who he seems. The secret she uncovers exposes an explosive, uncomfortable truth: the poet she is writing about is actually a white person presenting himself as Asian, and this fact is already known by her advisor and other top figures at the university.

Unfortunately, after that point, the novel veers into unbelievability. A newly aware Yang goes off the rails, questioning her white fiancée when she discovers that in his past he dated only Asian women, and she kicks him out of her life. From then on, the characters around her are inflated into an evil cast intent on preserving white privilege. While being a topic ripe for investigation, it is exaggerated to the point that it loses its punch. Disorientation’s storyline in the end becomes a sledgehammer, trying to prove its points. In this novel, the parts sadly exceed the whole. ( )

Slotting it into my humor shelf as a satire, but like... it also feels deeply niche to me? And maybe a little bit made for me, [b:The Enigma of Amigara Fault|18129124|The Enigma of Amigara Fault|Junji Ito|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1372145963l/18129124._SY75_.jpg|25463758]-style? As in, it's very sharply barbed towards:
* Academia, particularly humanities
* That awkward divide between white scholars in the Asian department vs Asian American studies (is it about you or for you?)
* Boba liberalism (and is it meaningful to protest depiction in media vs other action or are these all different gradations of oppression, etc.)
* MRAzns and the overall obsession with policing dating history (in addition to the also legit problem of fetishization)
* the pivot of allegedly progressive white dudes towards shouty rightwing extremism for clicks and $$$
* the "bootstraps; America is a meritocracy and affirmative action is garbage" shitty asians who tend to be friendly with the previous bullet point
* internal self-hatred or never thinking about one's identity until adulthood and looking back at alllllll the times as the token non-white in the friend group
* (putting behind spoilers as it's the main plot driver even though you find out at the end of the first quarter) white people pretending to be POC for the clout/perceived gains!

anyway *I* really liked it, but I'm also extremely online and could recognize elements from what I've read through Asian American twitter/reddit discourse (heck: I actually read the author earlier this year in a piece she wrote for Vanity Fair earlier this year about how white women write hypersexualized Asian women in media, and the conversations around it triggered a thread of additional notes on her article) so part of me wonders if that'll be new or go over the heads of other readers orrrrr if the litfic crowd is used to that kind of thing from campus novels (I don't read contemporary as often, usually in my historical or scifi/fantasy wheelhouse). I feel like nuances are going to get lost in the adaptation, but perhaps no more than either version of Dear White People? eh, if the people who get it get it, great and the cover blurbs are a good indication that they're already in the know (almost a who's who of authors to read: [a:Alexander Chee|158735|Alexander Chee|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1577467423p2/158735.jpg], [a:Cathy Park Hong|228167|Cathy Park Hong|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png], [a:Raven Leilani|19238247|Raven Leilani|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1589984892p2/19238247.jpg], and [a:Aravind Adiga|810254|Aravind Adiga|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1315250024p2/810254.jpg]) ( )

So, yeah... no. This just wasn't for me. The novel is billed as "outrageously hilarious," but I don't think I cracked a single smile while reading it. The author tried for a mix of drama and comedy, but neither element really worked well together - instead creating a strange juxtaposition that derailed the story's momentum.

The writing style was also a letdown; the prose often came across as forced, with heavy-handed metaphors that dragged down my reading experience.

While I appreciated some of the ideas presented in the book, overall, it was a frustrating read that left me unsatisfied. ( )

Overall entertaining, important information about the Chinese American experience, but the ending sucks. Young doctorate candidate uncovers racist cover up scandal by her university. ( )

Ingrid is a Korean-American PhD student, writing (or, more accurately, procrastinating writing) her dissertation about the poetry of a famous Chinese-American poet. She's happily engaged to a white man, and her dissertation advisor tells her she has a promising career ahead of her. In her desperation to find something to say about her topic that no one else has said before, she ends up making a horrible discovery that upends the entire field of Chinese-American literature. Ingrid is painfully naive, but along the way, she learns a lot about racism and comes to understand how much racism has impacted her life.

This is a satire about academia, and it keeps getting more and more bizarre and contrived. Somehow I think the author didn't quite get the tone right: the tone was a little too serious for some of the extreme hijinks that happen: maybe if the prose had been more playful, the book would have felt more coherent. ( )