BookBrowse Reviews Real Americans by Rachel Khong

BookBrowse:

A jewel box of a novel, filled with multiple angles, stories, and interpretations, each as fascinating as the one prior.

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.

This review first ran in the May 15, 2024 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.