Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou is a book that I want to give a standing ovation to. I didn't know what a journey of self-discovery this book would take me on when I first started reading it, but it is so ridiculously good, so wildly clever, that I want to talk about it with everyone I know.

Ingrid Yang is in the 8th year of her doctoral dissertation about a Chinese American poet named Xiao-Wen Chou, halfheartedly researching a subject that she isn't particularly interested in but was persuaded to pursue by her advisor, when a bizarre note she finds in the archives leads her down a rabbit hole like she could never have imagined. I don't want to give away much more about the plot because taking the journey firsthand is what made this such a delightful and cathartic reading experience for me, but suffice it to say that I've never read a book quite like this before.

I consumed this 400+ page book in three sittings. It reads so smoothly, it's like having a kind of bizarre and slightly uncomfortable but absolutely fascinating story recounted to you by a good friend who's much cooler than you. Chou dissects Ingrid's experience as an East Asian woman with incredible finesse. There's a lot here that resonated with me - the desperation to fit in as one of very few Asians in a predominantly white community, the emotional distance that growing up immersed in American culture puts between children and their immigrant parents, the unsettling feeling of regarding every white guy to show interest in you with a tiny bit of suspicion.

The cast of characters is multidimensional and vividly drawn. There are no stock villains, no reductive stereotypes, no easy dichotomy of good or bad, sympathetic or contemptible. Ingrid's blind spots are frustrating, but her inevitable growth is all the more heartfelt for it. Even the characters who defend yellowface or hold white empowerment rallies have nuance and depth and carefully crafted back stories. Elaine Hsieh Chou is the real deal, you guys. I know trust is only her first novel, but I will obsessively read whatever she writes from now on.

If you can't think of the film Breakfast at Tiffany's without seeing the horrifying face of Yunioshi or feel just a little mystified that a white woman named Pearl got a Nobel for writing about Chinese people 62 years before someone from China did, you'll certainly feel empowered and maybe vindicated by this book. This is one that not everyone will "get", and that's fine, because it's not written for or from the white gaze. It's an odyssey that should refresh your soul and decolonize your mind, and everyone should read it.