Kelly Writers House hosted Taiwanese American author and screenwriter Elaine Hsieh Chou for a conversation about her writing career and latest book on Wednesday.
The March 25 event was co-sponsored by Penn’s English Department and the Asian American Studies Program. Professor and Associate Dean for Humanities Jo Park hosted the conversation, which included an audience question and answer session.
In an interview with The Daily Pennsylvanian, Chou explained that her “endeavor” while writing is to make readers “uncomfortable.”
“To make them feel seen…that’s the work that speaks to me,” she added.
Chou is the critically acclaimed author of “Disorientation,” a satirical political fiction novel that was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice and was a finalist for the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award and the Thurber Prize.
She told the DP that she does not “like being tied to one genre or voice” or fully identify with the label of a comedic writer, adding that she did not originally intend for “Disorientation” to become a satire, but found that humor became a way to express her anger.
“The anger that had been building up inside me expressed itself through this really snarky, opinionated third person narrator,” she explained during the event.
When describing her writing process, Chou said she is drawn to “flawed, contradictory characters” and wants to avoid making any character seem like “the bad guy” or “the good guy.” Many of her stories are driven by clashes in perspective because she is “obsessed” with the “subjective truth” of a character’s point of view.
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During the question and answer session, Chou shared that she changed the narrator three times before settling on her final version — which encouraged her to rethink the main character's perspective.
Chou answered an audience question about writing endings, explaining that "you have to trust in whatever is going to come to you and to be open to it when it does."
Audience members spoke to the DP about their appreciation for Chou’s work.
Brandon Moulden — a bookseller at Uncle Bobbie's Coffee & Books — explained that he attended the event because he was “absolutely in love” with Chou’s work.
“It had been a very long time since I read something that made me laugh out loud consistently,” Moulden added. “I think it’s always refreshing to see that there are artists who can be a humor author and also just be able to understand emotion, connection, and also understand the complexity of our existence.”
College junior Jennie Fan told the DP that she attended the event because “Disorientation” “does such a great job…with the Asian American woman experience.”
Fan expressed that it was meaningful to see how Chou's “concrete life experiences within academia” informs her writing and hear Chou discuss her “identification link with the book.”
Chou told the DP that author events can “humanize writers.”
“I hope it can be reassuring to know writing and the journey to write and publish can be really long, can be really winding,” Chou added. “Trusting yourself, trusting in the story, I think will get you through it.”
