Just five days after the attacks, Cho performed in Los Angeles. But she wasn’t sure how her raunchy takes on sex, gay culture, race relations and fame would play following such a tragedy.

To her surprise, she discovered a new side of herself: the “reluctant patriot.”

“I think that in my audience that night, there was a very new idea of embracing patriotism,” she says. “We always felt like that was the realm of Midwest tailgate-party people. But the show suddenly turned into this USO show and I was like Bette Midler in there for the boys.”

On Sunday, Cho arrives at the Hammerstein Ballroom with her most recent work, “The Notorious C.H.O.” Although the title is a play on a nickname for rapper Biggie Smalls, Cho says it is more directly an homage to Lil’ Kim, who named her last album “Notorious K.I.M.”

“It’s ultimately more in honor of Kim than Biggie because I love her,” Cho says. “The show is not about rap music, but I just wanted to acknowledge it.

“Rap has all of those really great women who are the next wave of feminism,” she says. “It’s about their sexual energy and about their money and their wigs and their jewels. All of that is so lavish and rich and so profound to me.”

Cho says much of “C.H.O.” focuses on her ongoing struggle with sexual identity and body image. At one point, she describes her frequent trips to sex clubs.

“It’s an hour-and-a-half exploration of the body,” she says. “This show is probably my most sexually explicit show. It’s my version of Madonna’s ‘Sex’ book.”

Which is not to say that Cho has been guarded about such issues in the past. In her last show, “I’m the One That I Want,” which was released on DVD this week, she documented how she starved herself to lose weight for her starring role in the short-lived sitcom “All-American Girl.”

She also talked about an intimate encounter while serving as the ship’s comedian on a lesbian cruise. She tried to figure out if she was gay or straight. Ultimately she decided she “was just slutty.”

Cho attributes much of her behavior to ongoing unhappiness and depression.

In her book, also titled “I’m the One That I Want,” she describes a childhood where she was frequently picked on for being both overweight and Korean. As an adult, she turned to destructive relationships, drugs and alcohol.

But Cho says she’s worked through many issues to reach her happiest place yet. She also discounts the theory that all comedy comes from anger.

“I do know a lot of comics who are really, really miserable,” she adds. “But I don’t think it’s related. I think they just happen to be miserable.”