Review: The satirical absurdity of Chou’s ‘Disorientation’

“Disorientation” by Elaine Hsieh Chou Ingrid Yang’s future is laid out cleanly before her: Get her Ph.D., marry her fiancé, get a tenure-track teaching job and eventually retire and die of old age. Her dissertation topic is, of course, the canonical Chinese American poet Xiao-Wen Chou — even though she’s Taiwanese American and has no real interest in his boring, straightforward style of verse. Elaine Hsieh Chou’s debut novel “Disorientation” is funny from the get-go, in the kind of humor that is uncomfortable and sits in that discomfort until you have to at least chuckle. It’s situational comedy, as wacky as an actual dream, but beneath the humorously bizarre veneer is a heart-rending analysis of Ingrid’s love life, complete with repressed memories, shame, bitter self-reflection, and a comprehensive list of movies that portray Asian women in a problematic way from the past 100 years.