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A wry, tender portrait of a young woman—finally free to decide her own path, but unsure if she knows herself well enough to choose wisely—from a captivating new literary voice.

The plan is to leave. As for how, when, to where, and even why—she doesn’t know yet. So begins a journey for the twenty-four-year-old narrator of Days of Distraction. As a staff writer at a prestigious tech publication, she reports on the achievements of smug Silicon Valley billionaires and start-up bros while her own request for a raise gets bumped from manager to manager. And when her longtime boyfriend, J, decides to move to a quiet upstate New York town for grad school, she sees an excuse to cut and run.

Moving is supposed to be a grand gesture of her commitment to J and a way to reshape her sense of self. But in the process, she finds herself facing misgivings about her role in an interracial relationship. Captivated by the stories of her ancestors and other Asian Americans in history, she must confront a question at the core of her identity: How do you exist in a society that does not notice or understand you?

Equal parts tender and humorous, and told in spare but powerful prose, Days of Distraction is an offbeat coming-of-adulthood tale, a touching family story, and a razor-sharp appraisal of our times.

Reviews

Named a best book of 2020 by NPR, TIME, The Washington Post, Buzzfeed, Kirkus, Vanity Fair, Refinery 29, and The Chicago Public Library.

Alexandra Chang’s debut Days of Distraction brims with the predicaments of our current moment… It’s a mixed marriage of new forms and old that captures modern life then shapes it into something artistically abiding... By creating such a smart, thoughtful, funny, observant narrator, and taking us on a familiar arc of leaving home, contending with new surroundings, reconnecting with the past and negotiating a crossroads, Chang achieves the opposite effect of distraction culture… This is an immersive, emotionally honest novel that thinks through our era’s complexities, histories and divisions; it wanders into the gray areas, and wonders where the path forward might be.
—Washington Post

Quietly funny and thunderingly wise…. What matters here is Chang’s honest, unconventional storytelling…. [A] winning novel from a writer to watch.
—New York Times Book Review

Gripping…. Pointed, witty, and free of easy resolutions. And Chang’s deadpan style offers up moments of absurd humor…. Chang shows the challenge of trying to raise issues about racism that even those closest to her wish to avoid. Struggling to spark a conversation nobody wants to have, she conducts an engrossing one with herself.
—USA Today

A strikingly quiet, tender book that simultaneously traces the many big questions — in Chang’s words, the 'precarity of young adulthood, dynamics of being in an interracial relationship,' the insidious forces of capitalism, racism and sexism — shadowing the protagonist’s struggle to find her place in the world…. Remarkable.
—San Francisco Chronicle

Days of Distraction masterfully complicates the many harmful ways in which societal rage is placated daily.... It’s no easy feat to present these issues using bountiful evidence within an expansive work of fiction. Chang does this expertly. Her debut is a reminder that the novel can show and tell, convey story and social message, and dare the reader to participate in their own upheaval.
—Chicago Review of Books

[Chang] transmutes millennial malaise into an astute meditation on identity in the age of algorithms with this deadpan novel of an Asian American journalist fighting to be truly seen—by both her employer and her white boyfriend.
—O, The Oprah Magazine

Beautiful, urgent.... The most exciting aspect of Days of Distraction is the way information is revealed. Chang holds back for a long time until, suddenly—just as in life—everything is exposed.
—BUST

[Chang's prose] flows so gracefully across themes of millennial ennui, capitalist disillusionment, immigration, love, and sacrifice.
—Buzzfeed

Chang lets you exist in irresolution, her narrative still unwinding long after the pages have folded closed. Her lyrical prose won’t steer you away from the turbulences of reality, but it will stand in kinship with you as you weather them.
—F(r)iction

A startlingly original and deeply moving debut—kaleidoscopic, funny, heart-rending, beautifully observed, and formally daring. It struck me as a new variety of novel, a work of art roughly in the tradition of Claudia Rankine’s Citizen, reminding us that there is no difference between the political and the spiritual—everyone is, like the narrator, trying to be free, in order to love and be loved, but terrible forces set loose in the world—racism, corporatism—create obstructions in the path, more for some than for others, creating a political and a moral catastrophe. The accomplishment here is the way that Chang manages to embody this struggle in one quirky, highly self-aware, beautiful human soul, and to engage the reader completely, via the clarity and honesty of the language and her deep insights into human nature. Chang here establishes herself as one of the most important of the new generation of American writers.
—George Saunders

Alexandra Chang’s immaculate debut novel, Days of Distraction, is a wholly engaging joy to read. Chang writes with wit and sharpness as she curates moments, observations and histories that together make something of beautiful depth and significance. It takes great bravery to make art of so many of those things we fear and love. An important, gratifying read.
—Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Days of Distraction seized my attention like no other novel, distracting me entirely from my own life. The magic of this book is that its scale seems small, fixating on the minute details that make up our days: the anxieties, the obsessions, the observations made in the office, the neighborhood, the coffee shop. And yet inside Alexandra Chang’s brilliant narrator is a grand, restless consciousness, offering a portrait of a woman disappointed, lonely, angry, amused, and longing, who wants more of others—of her bosses, of her boyfriend, of white people—and who wants more for her one life. This is a book about America, and also an American love story, one that will leave you achingly awakened.
—Eleanor Henderson

Days of Distraction is the kind of book so alive with intelligence, humor, and attention that it made me feel more awake to the world just to read it. Alexandra Chang's finely tuned observations are a miracle of precision and clarity as she illuminates how complex and entangled our notions of selfhood, family, love, history, and existence ultimately are, and how perilous and exhilarating the journey to navigate them can be.
—Catherine Chung

How exhilarating to encounter a first novel this willing to take risks in both form and subject. Chang examines the fraught convergence of racism and intimate relationships with audacious, unsparing clarity, but also with tenderness. There are so many brave, beautiful passages in this book. I relished every page of it.
—Idra Novey

A coming-of-age tale for the 21st century… The narrator's meditations on themes like racism, capitalism, the role of technology in our lives, and complicated family relationships are simultaneously uniquely insightful and accessible to anyone who has grappled with these issues themselves. Beautifully crafted and deeply thoughtful.
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Chang portrays early adulthood with elegance and an offbeat humor that complements her poignant and deeply significant observations of life as a woman of color. She explores the struggle to be free in an oppressive society with incredible insight and clear, captivating prose that set her apart as a striking new voice in literature.
—Booklist (starred review)

Chang’s humorous, timely observations on race, technology, and relationships lend immediacy to the narrator’s chronicle of self-awareness. This introduces a formidably talented writer.
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Interviews and Profiles

Uneasy times for novelist Alexandra Chang and her ‘Days of Distraction’ alter ego, San Francisco Chronicle

State of Reflection: Alexandra Chang Interviewed by Kyle Lucia Wu, BOMB

An Oasis From the Constant Noise of Life: Talking With Alexandra Chang, The Rumpus

The Silence Between Our Words: An Interview with Alexandra Chang, The Margins

Alexandra Chang on Crossing the Boundaries of Memoir With Days of Distraction, Vanity Fair

On the Fragmented Form, Self-Discovery, & Publishing Amidst the Pandemic, Apogee

An Asian American Woman Tries to Find Herself Outside the White Gaze, Electric Literature

Disorder, Abbreviation, Clarity, Silence, Bookforum

Sheltering: Alexandra Chang on Fictionalizing Your Life, LitHub

Belletrist Virtual Book Tour: Alexandra Chang, Belletrist

Podcast Episode: Alexandra Chang, Author of Days of Distraction, Debutiful