 | |
| Author | Elaine Hsieh Chou |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | |
| Set in | Massachusetts |
| Publisher | Penguin Group |
Publication date | March 22, 2022 |
| Media type | Print (paperback & hardcover) |
| Pages | 416 pages |
Disorientation is a 2022 satirical humor political fiction novel by American writer Elaine Hsieh Chou. The novel was published by Penguin Group on March 22, 2022.
The novel follows Ingrid Yang, an eighth-year PhD student studying the work of late Chinese-American poet, Xiao-Wen Chou, described as the "so-called Chinese Robert Frost." The story takes place at Barnes University, a university in fictional Wittlebury, Massachusetts. Originally, Michael Bartholemew, Ingrid's white advisor and chair of the East Asian Studies department at Barnes, pressured Ingrid into studying Chou's poetry, even though she finds Chou stereotypical and boring. After spending long nights studying in the Chou archives at Barnes, and struggling to find inspiration for her dissertation, Ingrid finds a note in unfamiliar handwriting revealing new information about Chou's poetry. Feeling motivated to uncover this mystery and find a new angle for her dissertation, Ingrid, along with her friend Eunice, discovers that the handwriting on the note belongs to John Smith.
Ingrid and Eunice decide to break into John Smith's home to learn more about him. While inside his house, Ingrid watches the man who she thought was Xiao-Wen Chou take off his black wig, yellowface makeup, and eyelid tape, and reveal John Smith, a white man underneath.
Ingrid decides to anonymously out Xiao-Wen Chou as John Smith, causing chaos and scandal on campus. Vivian Vo, Ingrid's academic nemesis in the postcolonial studies department, leads campus activism around racial justice, causing Ingrid to reexamine her once-held beliefs. In this context, Ingrid also negotiates her relationship with her fiance Stephen, a white translator of Japanese literature.
The novel was originally a "very serious novel set on campus" but Chou changed the direction of the book after the controversy over Michael Derrick Hudson's pseudonymous publication of poems under the name Yi-Fen Chou. [1]
Chou was nominated for the Young Lions Fiction Award for the novel. [2]
On September 27, 2022, Apple Studios, Hyperobject Industries' Adam McKay, and Malala Yousafzai and Erika Kennair's company Extracurricular announced that they will produce a film adaptation of the novel. [3]
James Thorne Smith, Jr. was an American writer of humorous supernatural fantasy fiction under the byline Thorne Smith. He is best known today for the two Topper novels, comic fantasy fiction involving sex, much drinking and ghosts. With racy illustrations, these sold millions of copies in the 1930s and were equally popular in paperbacks of the 1950s.
Lady Audley's Secret is a sensation novel by Mary Elizabeth Braddon published in 1862. It was Braddon's most successful and well-known novel. Critic John Sutherland (1989) described the work as "the most sensationally successful of all the sensation novels". The plot centres on "accidental bigamy" which was in literary fashion in the early 1860s. The plot was summarised by literary critic Elaine Showalter (1982): "Braddon's bigamous heroine deserts her child, pushes husband number one down a well, thinks about poisoning husband number two and sets fire to a hotel in which her other male acquaintances are residing". Elements of the novel mirror themes of the real-life Constance Kent case of June 1860 which gripped the nation for years. Braddon’s second ‘bigamy’ novel, Aurora Floyd, appeared in 1863. Braddon set the story in Ingatestone Hall, Essex, inspired by a visit there. There have been three silent film adaptations, one UK television version in 2000, and three minor stage adaptations.
Alice Malsenior Tallulah-Kate Walker is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist. In 1982, she became the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which she was awarded for her novel The Color Purple. Over the span of her career, Walker has published seventeen novels and short story collections, twelve non-fiction works, and collections of essays and poetry.
Michael Cunningham is an American novelist and screenwriter. He is best known for his 1998 novel The Hours, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1999. Cunningham is Professor in the Practice of Creative Writing at Yale University.
Carson McCullers was an American novelist, short-story writer, playwright, essayist, and poet. Her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940), explores the spiritual isolation of misfits and outcasts in a small town of the Southern United States. Her other novels have similar themes and most are set in the Deep South.
David George Joseph Malouf is an Australian poet, novelist, short story writer, playwright and librettist. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2008, Malouf has lectured at both the University of Queensland and the University of Sydney. He also delivered the 1998 Boyer Lectures.
African American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent. It begins with the works of such late 18th-century writers as Phillis Wheatley. Before the high point of enslaved people narratives, African American literature was dominated by autobiographical spiritual narratives. The genre known as slave narratives in the 19th century were accounts by people who had generally escaped from slavery, about their journeys to freedom and ways they claimed their lives. The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s was a great period of flowering in literature and the arts, influenced both by writers who came North in the Great Migration and those who were immigrants from Jamaica and other Caribbean islands. African American writers have been recognized by the highest awards, including the Nobel Prize given to Toni Morrison in 1993. Among the themes and issues explored in this literature are the role of African Americans within the larger American society, African American culture, racism, slavery, and social equality. African-American writing has tended to incorporate oral forms, such as spirituals, sermons, gospel music, blues, or rap.
Taiwanese literature refers to the literature written by Taiwanese in any language ever used in Taiwan, including Japanese, Taiwanese Han and Austronesian languages.
1984 is a 1956 British black-and-white science fiction film, based on the 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, depicting a totalitarian future of a dystopian society. The film was the first feature-length adaptation of the story, and followed a previous Westinghouse Studio One adaptation and a BBC-TV made-for-TV adaptation. 1984 was directed by Michael Anderson and starring Edmond O'Brien as protagonist Winston Smith, and featured Donald Pleasence, Jan Sterling, and Michael Redgrave.
Jacqueline Margaret Kay,, is a Scottish poet, playwright, and novelist, known for her works Other Lovers (1993), Trumpet (1998) and Red Dust Road (2011). Kay has won many awards, including the Somerset Maugham Award in 1994, the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1998 and the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book of the Year Award in 2011.
Chou Wen-chung was a Chinese American composer of contemporary classical music. He emigrated in 1946 to the United States and received his music training at the New England Conservatory and Columbia University. Chou is credited by Nicolas Slonimsky as one of the first Chinese composers who attempted to translate authentic East Asian melo-rhythms into the terms of modern Western music.
The University of Georgia Press or UGA Press is the university press of the University of Georgia, a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Athens, Georgia. It is the oldest and largest publishing house in Georgia and a member of the Association of University Presses.
The Postman Always Rings Twice is a 1946 American film noir directed by Tay Garnett and starring Lana Turner, John Garfield, and Cecil Kellaway. It is based on the 1934 novel of the same name by James M. Cain. This adaptation of the novel also features Hume Cronyn, Leon Ames and Audrey Totter. The musical score was written by George Bassman and Erich Zeisl.
Trumpet is the debut novel from Scottish writer and poet Jackie Kay, published in 1998. It chronicles the life and death of fictional jazz artist Joss Moody through the recollections of his family, friends and those who came in contact with him at his death. Kay stated in an interview that her novel was inspired by the life of Billy Tipton, an American jazz musician who lived secretly as a transgender man in the mid-twentieth century.
Enid Shomer is an American poet and fiction writer. She is the author of five poetry collections, two short story collections and a novel. Her poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines including The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, Paris Review, The New Criterion, Parnassus, Kenyon Review, Tikkun, and in anthologies including The Best American Poetry. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, New Stories from the South, the Year's Best, Modern Maturity, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, and Virginia Quarterly Review. Her stories, poems, and essays have been included in more than fifty anthologies and textbooks, including Poetry: A HarperCollins Pocket Anthology. Her book reviews and essays have appeared in The New Times Book Review, The Women's Review of Books, and elsewhere. Two of her books, Stars at Noon and Imaginary Men, were the subjects of feature interviews on NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Her writing is often set in or influenced by life in the State of Florida. Shomer was Poetry Series Editor for the University of Arkansas Press from 2002 to 2015, and has taught at many universities, including the University of Arkansas, Florida State University, and the Ohio State University, where she was the Thurber House Writer-in-Residence.
The AML Awards are given annually by the Association for Mormon Letters (AML) to the best work "by, for, and about Mormons." They are juried awards, chosen by a panel of judges. Citations for many of the awards can be found on the AML website.
Black Butterflies is an English-language Dutch drama film about the life of South-African Afrikaans poet and anti-apartheid political dissident Ingrid Jonker. The film was directed by Paula van der Oest and premiered in the Netherlands on February 6 before being released on 31 March 2011.
Hyperobject Industries is an American film and television production company founded by director, producer, screenwriter, and comedian Adam McKay in October 2019.
Jennifer Lynn Barnes is an American writer of young adult novels.
 | This article about a 2020s novel is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |