Publisher's View   

Rachel Khong's sophomore novel Real Americans is an intergenerational saga that questions racial and cultural identity and our control over our destinies. Over the course of the book, we meet May, her daughter Lily, and her grandson Nick. May, who flees China's Cultural Revolution and the persecution of scientists and academics, is driven by a passion for understanding gene expression. In America, she pursues her research at a lab affiliated with a powerful family's pharmaceutical empire. She remakes herself and her family to fit into her new homeland, raising Lily to speak only English, leave milk and cookies for Santa, and pack bologna-and-white-bread sandwiches for lunch. Yet Lily, a Florida girl who by her early twenties has barely left the state, let alone the country, finds herself routinely introduced as "Korean" and "Thai" by her boss at the travel magazine where she is an unpaid intern.

Lily lacks her mother's driving ambition and worries about this, unsure of what she is meant for in life, until she meets Matthew, a rich white guy from a storied East Coast family who opens for her a world of privilege and power, and the possibility of belonging. Their son, Nick, is blond-haired and blue-eyed, growing into the classic all-American high schooler. Yet living on a secluded Washington island with his mother, Nick still feels the outsider, wondering why he looks nothing like Lily, and who his father is, which she keeps a secret.

As the title suggests, the book explores what it means to be a "real American." Each of the three main characters feels excluded in some way: one doesn't look the part; one looks the part but feels different from his peers; one's past life and language is just too different to be shared in current surroundings. Yet the individualism of all their behaviors seems undeniably American in contrast to family-oriented Confucian values, or the greater-whole social principles of Chinese Communism. This individualism manifests in May's ambition, Lily's rootlessness, and Nick's self-centeredness and teenage angst. Competing interpretations of each character and their identity create a tension that echoes throughout the book. Lily is described both as an "antisocial Chinese mom," by her son's best friend, and "a real American," by someone from her past who is amazed by her inability to speak Chinese and lack of knowledge about China's history.

Throughout the book lingers the question of one's future: fate, destiny, free will. May, ever the scientist, learns of nucleotide-encoding DNA sequences and wonders what traits a person is born with, as opposed to what traits they can change. Her research focuses on epigenetics and protein expression, as she attempts to actively choose which traits can be expressed. Lily and Nick's experiences of free will and fate come about in a more fantastical way: They can control how time moves for them. In pivotal moments, time dilates and they can turn over every possible decision and potential option before choosing. This ability feels a little random and incongruently sci-fi in a book that is otherwise purely literary fiction, but is easily glossed over in the larger context of the story. Each character makes monumental decisions to escape what they think they know of their past, but with consequences for future generations. Each tries to love in a way that repairs prior broken relationships with parents, but still creates family disputes. Nick, despite not knowing his grandmother May, ends up working in an iteration of the same field of research as an adult. The characters' experiences are told in a non-linear sequence, and we only learn May's complete story at the end. Khong's unspoken question remains: If we really knew and understood our past, would we make the same decisions? How much of our lives can we change; are they destined, free will, or luck?

Overall, I adored this book, which asks lots of thoughtful questions without feeling heavy or too philosophical. As a Chinese-American reader, I particularly related to many of the identity questions posed, though this exploration is relevant to anyone who has ever gone to a gift shop and not been able to find their name on a souvenir keychain. While I identified most with Lily as a character, May's story, set during the Cultural Revolution, was most fascinating, if heartrending, as it's a section of history that is often still too painful to discuss for many of my generation's parents and grandparents. By understanding May's story, I understand a little more of my own family's history and motivations. Real Americans is a beautiful work of prose: crisp, well-paced, told through an excellent narrative. Thoroughly worth a read.

Reviewed by Pei Chen

Write your own review

Rated 5 out of 5 by Cathryn Conroy
A Thoughtful, Ingeniously Plotted Novel About the Choices We Make with the Life We've Been Given
This is a multigenerational saga about a Chinese-American family that will take you from the 1950s rice paddies in the southern basin of China's Yangtze River to Mao's 1960s Cultural Revolution to 9/11 in New York City to the hot-shot San Francisco tech scene of the 2020s. It's a can't-put-it-down read that is part historical novel, part romance, and part coming-of-age tale.

Written by Rachel Khong, this is the story of May and Charles, two university students who aren't in love but join together to flee Mao's repressive China in the 1960s. After a few years in Hong Kong, they emigrate to the United States, where they get jobs as scientists working on the connection between DNA and genetic engineering. When the company changes hands, they move to Florida. May and Charles have one child, a daughter named Lily. She is a great disappointment to them. Lily loves art, but is not talented enough to be an artist herself. She floats around New York City, barely financially solvent, until she meets Matthew, a tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed rich American. They fall in love and marry. They have a son named Nick. When Lily finds out something nefarious, unethical, and highly reprehensible that her mother did to Lily when Lily was just a little girl, and later to her infant son, she flees, swearing to never speak to her mother again.

This plot summary above is told in chronological order. The book is wildly different, beginning with Lily and Matthew's romance in 2000, continuing with Nick's coming-of-age story in the 2020s, and ending with May's incredible, eyepopping tale that begins in the 1950s. It is only at the very end that the three stories finally come together.

The three tales are very different, so different that the novel reads more like three novellas. Lily and Matthew's romance is a sweet, ChickLit tale. (Don't be fooled! The rest of the novel is not like that.) Nick's coming-of-age story drags on a bit too long, told in the naïve voice of a teenager/young adult. And finally, the crux of the novel—its real heart and soul—is told in May's astonishing life story.

Ingeniously plotted and written with insight and candor, this is a thoughtful novel about the choices we make with the life we are given. It is a story about family, race, and inheritance. It is a story about fortune—and that word's multiple senses of meaning. I found the novel to be intriguing and compelling as it examines what it means to be a "real" American, as well as a good human being.

Rated 5 out of 5 by Gloria M
Must Read!
I vaguely remember all the great reviews and awards Rachel Khong received back in 2017 for her first published novel, "Goodbye, Vitamin" and thinking I should add it to my TBR list, which somehow never actually happened (which I totally regret-and it's on there now!) but I definitely was thrilled to get a free copy of "Real Americans" (thank you to Penguin Random House.)

I devoured this one in two days-which meant I did not pay much attention to real life-but, that's fine because it was so worth it. On the basic level it is a tale of Lily Chen, a 22 year old unpaid intern in New York City who meets Matthew, a wealthy heir to a pharmaceutical fortune. One of the most memorable quotes is Lily saying "More than I love you, I wanted him to say that he knew me. Who else did?" The expertly written and crafted tale shares their journey to love, with both obstacles and moments of joy, but also goes much, much further than that.

It includes multiple generations, with deep dives into Lily's parents-especially her mother , May and her son, Nick. May preferred her career in biology to her role as a mother, and this understandably resulted in many difficulties for Lily. But, a secret will soon be revealed that changes everyone's lives and raises relevant questions about nurture vs. nature, and the whole concept of family (including creating your own family outside of birth ties.) Throw in the issues of race and class and ethics and Khong has produced a modern classic.

I highly recommend this book to all who love family stories and literary works of art!

Rated 4 out of 5 by Labmom55
Gets better as it goes along
I was not a fan of Goodbye, Vitamin, but I appreciated this book much more. It’s a multi-part story that covers three generations of a Chinese American family - mother, son and grandmother. It starts off weak but gets more interesting with each section.
At the start of the book, Lily is a young woman - just graduated from college, eking out a bare existence in NYC when she meets Matthew. Matthew is everything she’s not - blond, rich, with a great job. It’s an opposites attract story with the added factor of race thrown in. I wasn’t enthralled with this section, it had more of a feel of a romance novel, but it sets up the drama. I would have liked more meat about her relationship with her parents, the guilt, the disappointment on both sides.

The second part is about her son, Nick, a young man in search of himself. His parents are long divorced, his mom has moved across the country and he has no interaction with his dad. In defiance of genetic expectations, he looks exactly like his tall, blond, blue eyed father. His only friend convinces him to do a DNA test which sets the ball rolling for him to finally meet his father.

The third part is told by his grandmother and relates her years in China and her life after she comes to America. I appreciated that Khong was able to effortlessly weave the history of China under Mao without slowing the story. This section delves deep into Mai’s research into genetic science but was easy to understand and did a good job probing the ethics. This book has a lot to say about identity, ambition, wealth, the desire to make something of one’s self vs. the desire for a peaceful life. “She had never wanted to be remarkable. Her life was small and rich and entirely hers.” It also has so much to say about the parent-child relationship - the love, the anger, how a parent’s desire to make things better so often goes wrong.

I am not a fan of magic realism and this book did nothing to dissuade my opinion. I felt it added nothing to the story and the reason to include it went right over my head.