*A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2024, at publications including: The New York Times, Oprah Daily, Today, TIME, Kirkus, Goodreads, Vogue, LitHub, New York Magazine, Good Housekeeping, Vulture, BookPage, San Francisco Chronicle, The Story Exchange, Bustle, Town & Country, and The Rumpus.*
"If you liked Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, read Real Americans by Rachel Khong...[Rachel Khong] returns, painting on a larger canvas, in this story about three generations of a Chinese American family...Different voices follow, in a multilayered look at family and identity." —The Washington Post
"[Real Americans is a] plot-rich, spiraling, multigenerational epic [that] possesses the same heartrending humanity and deceptively subtle portrayal of characters' unseen depths [as Rachel Khong's debut]—so impossible to relate, so essential to everything. As in life, the love is in the details." —Annie Bostrom, Booklist
"Imaginative...expansive...intimate... Real Americans is a profound, riveting, and loving journey of betrayal and forgiveness, of words left unsaid, that will provide rich food for thought for book clubs and independent readers alike." —Jaclyn Fulwood, Shelf Awareness
"[A] sweeping, smart, and totally engrossing story about destiny, determination, and what truly makes us who we are [that] explores [these themes] with style and smarts." —"Must Read Books of 2024," Town & Country
"How much do our families shape our identities? In her second novel, Rachel Khong, founder of The Ruby SF, follows the love, loss, striving and inheritances woven throughout three generations to answer this question."—Hannah Bae, Datebook, San Francisco Chronicle
"With shades of magical realism, [Real Americans] considers destiny, race, and privilege as its three main characters confront how their lives have been shaped by a confluence of biology, world events, their parents’ choices, and pure luck. Ultimately the novel excavates the tricky endeavor of breaking free from preordained destiny." —"The Best Books of 2024 So Far," Vogue
"By encompassing a family as a whole, [Real Americans] asks big questions about our lineage and futures, how much is really up to us, whether the fact of our pasts guarantee our fate, or whether we have agency over the lives we live."—"Most Anticipated Books of 2024," Literary Hub
“Khong masterfully explores a family splintered by science, struggling to redefine their own lives after uncovering harrowing secrets. Real Americans is a mesmerizing multigenerational novel about privilege, identity and the illusions of the American dream.”—Brit Bennett, author of The Vanishing Half
“Real Americans is a grand novel that explores the American psyche, dramatizing the fundamental American belief in the ability to change the world and improve humanity. Rachel Khong shows infinite and colorful perceptions of the world, which are often leavened with wisdom. Besides being a page turner, this book is also an eye-opener, imaginative and exhilarating.”—Ha Jin, author of Waiting
“Real Americans traverses time with verve and feeling. Khong captures how people can be strange to themselves, how bewilderment can be a site of creation (or change, or becoming).”—Raven Leilani, author of Luster
“Gorgeous, heartfelt, soaring, philosophical and deft, Real Americans flips the multigenerational novel inside out. Fate, honesty, our bargains with life. You will keep turning it over and over in your mind.”—Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less Is Lost
“Aglow with love in its many forms, suffused with questions of where—and to whom—we belong, Real Americans is a book of rare charm. Khong untangles the roots of family with a wry, tender attention that will leave readers as comforted as they are challenged.”—C Pam Zhang, author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold and Land of Milk and Honey
“Rachel Khong’s gripping second novel explores how biology, our parents’ abstract hopes for us, sheer luck, and the forces of history itself make us who we are. Real Americans is both a tender story of the intimate relationships between people and a sharp examination of very big questions of ethics, politics, and fate.”—Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind
"A sweeping exploration of choice, chance, class, race, and genetic engineering in three generations of a Chinese American family. Khong’s follow-up to her sweet, slim debut... [is] on a more ambitious scale, portraying three generations in what feel like three linked novellas, or somehow also like three connected gardens...[Concern] for how and why we turn out the way we do animates the book on every level...Every character is dear, and every one of them makes big mistakes, causing a ripple effect of anger and estrangement that we watch with dismay, and hope. Bold, thoughtful, and delicate at once, addressing life’s biggest questions through artfully crafted scenes and characters." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review*
★ 2024-01-05
A sweeping exploration of choice, chance, class, race, and genetic engineering in three generations of a Chinese American family.
Khong’s follow-up to her sweet, slim debut—Goodbye, Vitamin (2017)—is again about parents and children but on a more ambitious scale, portraying three generations in what feel like three linked novellas, or somehow also like three connected gardens. The first begins in 1999 New York City, where Lily Chen stands next to a man at an office party who wins a big-screen TV in the raffle. He insists she take it; he is Matthew Maier, heir to a pharmaceutical fortune, and has all the TVs he needs. On their first date, they go to Paris after dinner, and as this section ends, they’ve had their first child. The second part of the book moves to 2021 on an island off the coast of Washington state. It’s narrated by Lily’s now-15-year-old son, Nick; his father is nowhere in sight, at least for now. The closing section unfolds in 2030 in the San Francisco Bay Area. It’s told by Lily’s now elderly mother, May, with an extended flashback to her youth in China during the Cultural Revolution and her first years in the U.S. As a budding scientist, May was fascinated by genetics. Of the lotus flowers she studied at university, she observes, “Raindrop-shaped buds held petals that crept closer, each day, to unfurling. As humans we were made of the same stuff, but their nucleotides were coded such that they grew round, green leaves instead of our human organs, our beating hearts.” This concern for how and why we turn out the way we do animates the book on every level, and along with science, social constructs like race and class play major roles. Every character is dear, and every one of them makes big mistakes, causing a ripple effect of anger and estrangement that we watch with dismay, and hope.
Bold, thoughtful, and delicate at once, addressing life’s biggest questions through artfully crafted scenes and characters.