A Review of Elaine Hsieh Chou’s Disorientation (Penguin Press, 2022).
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Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape
Well, my brilliant colleague James Kim was the one who had been telling me about Elaine Hsieh Chou’s debut novel Disorientation. He did so just before I was heading off to the Association of Asian American Studies in Denver, so I knew I had the perfect book to bring with me on the plane. Little did I know the novel would pack such an incredible punch. Let’s let the official marketing description give us some key information: “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.”
What can I say? Hard to describe this dark, satirical look at academia. There are a lot of absolutely bonkers elements to this narrative that I think, had a lesser novelist engaged them, might have come off unsuccessfully. But Chou is clearly well-versed in the politics of Asian American Studies and culture, so it almost seems as if she wrote this novel not only for the general public, but scholars and students of the field as well. I guess I have to list a spoiler warning here, so look away unless you plan to know some of the major plot twists. So, with that out of the way, one of the biggest elements that the novel hinges on is a form of yellowface involving Xiao-Wen Chou, but it’s the kind of yellowface that almost borders on the speculative. That being said, it’s really clear that Chou is bringing up something like that Araki Yasusada controversy which involved a poet of East Asian descent who was later unmasked as a fictive construct likely by a white poet. In any case, the question of Asian American authenticity as it relates not only to representation and authorship but also to one’s commitments to social justice traffic throughout this text, making it one of the best in terms of covering the thorny questions that undergird the field. Where the novel is particularly outstanding is in its unflinching portrayal of interracial desire, and the work reminds me a little bit of Laurence Chua’s Gold by the Inch in how it drives head into a very difficult topic and stays there. This novel is clearly going to get a lot of critical interest, and I’ll be waiting to read all the wonderful scholarship it is going to produce.
Buy the Book Here
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ccape
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape
Well, my brilliant colleague James Kim was the one who had been telling me about Elaine Hsieh Chou’s debut novel Disorientation. He did so just before I was heading off to the Association of Asian American Studies in Denver, so I knew I had the perfect book to bring with me on the plane. Little did I know the novel would pack such an incredible punch. Let’s let the official marketing description give us some key information: “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.”
What can I say? Hard to describe this dark, satirical look at academia. There are a lot of absolutely bonkers elements to this narrative that I think, had a lesser novelist engaged them, might have come off unsuccessfully. But Chou is clearly well-versed in the politics of Asian American Studies and culture, so it almost seems as if she wrote this novel not only for the general public, but scholars and students of the field as well. I guess I have to list a spoiler warning here, so look away unless you plan to know some of the major plot twists. So, with that out of the way, one of the biggest elements that the novel hinges on is a form of yellowface involving Xiao-Wen Chou, but it’s the kind of yellowface that almost borders on the speculative. That being said, it’s really clear that Chou is bringing up something like that Araki Yasusada controversy which involved a poet of East Asian descent who was later unmasked as a fictive construct likely by a white poet. In any case, the question of Asian American authenticity as it relates not only to representation and authorship but also to one’s commitments to social justice traffic throughout this text, making it one of the best in terms of covering the thorny questions that undergird the field. Where the novel is particularly outstanding is in its unflinching portrayal of interracial desire, and the work reminds me a little bit of Laurence Chua’s Gold by the Inch in how it drives head into a very difficult topic and stays there. This novel is clearly going to get a lot of critical interest, and I’ll be waiting to read all the wonderful scholarship it is going to produce.
Buy the Book Here
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