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Days of Distraction (2020)Description / Buy at Amazon

Alexandra Chang
Author Alexandra Chang is a prolific freelance writer that specializes for websites in the research, science, and technology fields. She was born in Shanghai, China and grew up in the California cities of San Francisco and Davis after her parents relocated to the United States.

She wrote a novel called “Days of Distraction” which is a coming of age story for the 21st century that focuses on cultural, racial, and gender differences from the point of view of the narrator. The novel also addresses technology and capitalism that influences are lives with complex family relationships.

Alexandra wrote the novel while living with her husband, their cat and dog in Ithaca, New York.

The novel made multiple Most Anticipated Books of 2020 lists, including BuzzFeed News, The Millions, and Electric Literature, as well as others.

Her education consists of earning a B.A, at the University of California at Berkeley, which she attended from 2008 until 2010. Then earning a Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) at Syracuse University, attending from 2015 until 2018.

During the time Alexandra was going to school at Berkeley, she served as the Communications Coordinator.

Between the period of time that she was going to school at Berkeley and Syracuse, she worked as the literacy agency as an assistant with Joanna Pulcini Literary Management from January 2010 to February 2011.

Alexandra was also an editorial intern in San Francisco with AllThingsDigital for three months. For ten months, she served as a staff editor with Macworld, and as a staff writer for WIRED in San Francisco starting in the year 2011 until 2012.

She was a staff writer for Cornell University starting in 2014 until 2015 in the Ithaca, New York area before she attended Syracuse University. While she attended Syracuse, she was a graduate student instructor from 2016 until 2018.

In the year 2013, she began writing freelance, focusing more on writing fiction.

Alexandra also gives lectures to help people better use social media to get jobs and market themselves, and why blogging is beneficial and important to journalists who are just starting out.

Her short fiction work has appeared in Glimmer Train, Passages North, Room, Catapult, 3:AM Magazine, Zoetrope: All-Story, and the LARB Quaterly Journal, as well as other places.

Her story “To Get Rich is Glorious” won first prize in a 2017 short fiction competition, while “Tomb Sweeping Day” took second in a Short Story Award for New Writers.

Alexandra’s debut novel, called “Days of Distraction”, was released in the year 2020, which is from the literary fiction genre. The novel was published by Ecco/HarperCollins. Her first short fiction collection was called “Tomb Sweeping”, which was also released by Ecco/HarperCollins.

“Days of Distraction” is the first stand alone novel and was released in the year 2020. A tender and wry portrait of a young lady, who is finally free to choose her own path, yet unsure if she knows herself well enough to pick wisely. It is about a woman that finds people often see in her what they expect rather than what she truly is. More often, however, she winds up shrinking herself down, in order to fit into these misperceptions people have of her. In a world where social media allows people to be extraordinary, she simply asserts that she is ordinary, a consumer of the lives of others, not the creator of one.

The plan is just to leave. Any specifics: the where, how, and when, or even why, she is unsure about. So starts a journey for this twenty-four-year-old. She works as a staff writer at a prestigious tech publication and reports on the achievements of all of the smug Silicon Valley start-up bros and the billionaires. And this is all while her request for a raise gets sent from one manager to another and she gets assured that it will be taken care of eventually. She asked for a raise after finding out she makes less than the rest of her colleagues.

J, her longtime boyfriend, decides to move out to a quiet town in upstate New York in order to attend grad school, she sees her opportunity to just cut and run. J refers to her as his ‘little sweetheart’ and she has given up trying to help him correctly pronounce the family nickname that he insists on using.

Moving is supposed to be the grand gesture of her commitment to J and a chance to reshape her sense of self. It will also give her the chance to leave the high-pressure microcosm of San Francisco and begin again. In the whole process, she finds herself facing misgivings about her role in the interracial relationship. Captivated by the tales of her ancestors and some other Asian Americans, she also has to confront a question that is at the core of her identity. What does it really mean to exist in a society that doesn’t notice or even understand you?

The novel is deeply moving and shockingly original, and Alexandra establishes herself as one of prominent of the new generation of American writers. This is equal parts humorous and tender and is told in powerful yet spare prose, and is and is a touching family story, an offbeat coming-of-adulthood tale, and a razor-sharp appraisal of the times. Some readers found this to be an entirely engaging read, as Chang writes with sharpness and wit.

Chang has got a knack for reminding us that there isn’t any difference between any one of us despite our spiritual and political viewpoint. She also points out that we are just trying to be free in how we live, no matter what goes against us in the material world.

Chang’s writing here is made up of brief vignettes and a discursive narrative, and the book, stylistically, can be seen as a collection of connected microfictions. However that is not to say the writing is choppy or disjointed. Instead, this style allows the reader a chance to slow it down, and think about what they have just read, and figure out on their own how things fit together.

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