A Taiwanese American woman's coming-of-consciousness ignites eye-opening revelations and chaos on a college campus in this outrageously hilarious yet startlingly tender debut novelTwenty-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 four years of painstaking research, she has nothing but anxiety and stomach pain to show for her efforts. When she accidentally stumbles upon a strange and curious note in the Chou archives, 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, one that upends her entire life and the lives of those around her. 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 campus protests and OTC drug hallucinations, to book burnings and a movement that stinks of "Yellow Peril" propaganda.In the aftermath, nothing looks quite 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. At the same time, she finds herself drawn to the cool and aloof Alex Kim (even though she swears he's not her type). 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.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. In this electrifying debut novel from a provocative new voice, Chou asks who gets to tell our stories-and how the story changes when we finally tell it ourselves.Story Locale: Massachusetts

MASTERFUL DEBUT: Disorientation is Chou's stunning debut; her short fiction has been published in Ploughshares, Guernica, Tin House, and elsewhere. This novel announces Chou as the real deal, a fearless writer who writes straight into some of the most fraught and complex issues of our time, with empathy, wit, and great intelligence.BASED ON A TRUE STORY: Chou was inspired by the 2015 story of a white poet who began using a Chinese-sounding pseudonym: Yi-Fen Chou. But for Elaine Chou, who grew up with and was made fun of for the last name Chou, to see someone steal her name and race when it benefitted him, hit hard. Since then, more examples of white people disguising themselves in other races have come out; this novel dives deep into the personal and public repercussions for those whose culture was so casually appropriated - a side of the coin so rarely explored.CAMPUS NOVEL: Set at a fictional liberal arts college in Massachusetts, Chou captures the nuances of academia - from the interdepartmental arguments, the stressful dash for tenure, and the competition between graduate students for recognition.#OWNVOICES: In Disorientation, Chou takes on the harm done by the model minority myth, the history of yellow face, and the decades-long problematic portrayal of Asians in art, books, and movies. This is a necessary read that exposes our own blind spots.