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Real Americans: A Read with Jenna Pick
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Real Americans: A Read with Jenna Pick

A Novel

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April 30, 2024 | ISBN 9780593825952

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About the Book

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the award-winning author of Goodbye, Vitamin: How far would you go to shape your own destiny? An exhilarating novel of American identity that spans three generations in one family and asks: What makes us who we are? And how inevitable are our futures?

"Mesmerizing"—Brit Bennett • "A page turner.”—Ha Jin • “Gorgeous, heartfelt, soaring, philosophical and deft"—Andrew Sean Greer • "Traverses time with verve and feeling."—Raven Leilani

Real Americans begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when twenty-two-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company, meets Matthew. Matthew is everything Lily is not: easygoing and effortlessly attractive, a native East Coaster, and, most notably, heir to a vast pharmaceutical empire. Lily couldn't be more different: flat-broke, raised in Tampa, the only child of scientists who fled Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Despite all this, Lily and Matthew fall in love.

In 2021, fifteen-year-old Nick Chen has never felt like he belonged on the isolated Washington island where he lives with his single mother, Lily. He can't shake the sense she's hiding something. When Nick sets out to find his biological father, the journey threatens to raise more questions than it provides answers.

In immersive, moving prose, Rachel Khong weaves a profound tale of class and striving, race and visibility, and family and inheritance—a story of trust, forgiveness, and finally coming home.

Exuberant and explosive, Real Americans is a social novel par excellence that asks: Are we destined, or made? And if we are made, who gets to do the making? Can our genetic past be overcome?
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Praise for Real Americans: A Read with Jenna Pick

A BEST BOOK OF 2024: Vogue, NPR, Oprah Daily, Garden & Gun, Woman's World, Kirkus, The Independent, and Women | News, Politics, Lifestyle, and Expert Opinions

"If you liked Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, read Real Americans by Rachel Khong." —The Washington Post

"It's a tale as old as time: Poor girl meets rich boy, they fall in love, and they live happily ever after. Well, not quite... A profound read."—People

"Remarkable... Folded into [Real Americans] are doomed love stories, fancy parties, a subplot about epigenetics, Chinese people who look white and yummy treats... The book also poses a dizzying array of questions: What does it mean to be American, and who gets to say who is one?” —Robert Ito, The New York Times

“A…masterful, shape-shifting novel about multiracial identity….What makes Americans 'real'? Is it our competitive drive? Our craving for wealth and status? Our insatiable quest for scientific advancement? Or is it—inevitably—the color of our skin and eyes?... [Rachel] Khong manages these twisting threads with masterful deftness.... [An] irresistible puzzle of a novel."—Aimee Liu, Los Angeles Times

"[Rachel] Khong layers the lives of her characters to challenge how well we can really know one another... [Khong]…captures the feeling of floating in the in-between, not firmly tethered to one pole of identity or another but instead looking for a way to feel secure in your own space... And that title—Real Americans—evokes more questions than any single book could answer. What is American, and what is real?" —Lucy Feldman, TIME

"Real Americans is both a novel of ideas and of beautiful sentences. Khong's prose is a pleasure to read... even as the questions she raises are chilling, indeed."—May-lee Chai, Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Riveting in its unexpected turns, Real Americans is a novel about past mistakes and their echoes — and a reminder that those histories need not be binding."—Hannah Bae, San Francisco Chronicle

"An absolute page turner, this multi-generation family saga is quietly suspenseful... Spanning between the 1960s to present day, Khong weaves a gripping tale you are, for sure, not going to want to miss."—"Most Anticipated Books of Spring 2024," Kami Tei, Amazon Editor

"Unforgettable...Vibrant, tender and one to pass onto a friend."—"Best New Books of Spring," Oprah Daily

"This multigenerational stunner asks a thought-provoking question: Do we have any control over our destiny, or do some people just get lucky?"—Real Simple

"[A]n ambitious, spacious book...I was entirely entranced...from the start, and I talked about it endlessly to anyone who would listen when I finished.” —Jana Pollack, Skimm Reads editor

"By encompassing a family as a whole, [Real Americans] asks big questions about our lineage and futures, how much is really up to us."—"Most Anticipated Books of 2024," Literary Hub

“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

“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 Land of Milk and Honey

“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
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Real Americans: A Read with Jenna Pick

BEIJING, 1966 

She isn’t afraid, but he is. They stand, in the darkness, before a glass case of old things. A Ming dynasty inkstone. A chrysanthemum carved from horn. A Song painting stamped with ruby-red collector’s seals. And on a silk pillow, so slight it could be missed: an ancient lotus seed with a legend behind it. 

The story goes like this: One night, long ago, a dragon emerged from the sky and dropped this seed into the emperor’s open hand. His advisors huddled near to examine it. What fortune! they remarked. This seed would grant the emperor his greatest wish. Unfortunately, he died that night, while contemplating his options. He might have asked for immortality. 

She takes a hammer from her knapsack. With all her strength, she strikes the glass. It makes a beautifully clear sound as it shatters. Quickly, the two get to work, securing the relics. It is an attempt to spare them from the Red Guards’ destruction—an act of protest, small, against a movement she’s no match for. 

The seed is unspectacular, so old it resembles a stone. Yet she’s aware it contains an entire future: roots, stems, leaves, blooms, to seeds once more—encoded, like she is. Her heart pumps blood, her lungs take in air, she sleeps, wakes, eats, excretes. Will her life be long or short? What has she chosen, she wonders, and what has chosen her? She likes the fragrance of gardenias, but not the scent of lipstick. She doesn’t mind the rain. She is in love, which feels, to her, at once easy and hard, elemental and ungraspable—like vanishing and eternity at the same time. She wants to ask of every person she meets: Is it this way for you?

“Hurry,” her companion says. 

A door slams, loudly. Someone is here. The footsteps draw closer. They flee. 

Outside, she opens her fist. On her bleeding palm rests a stolen seed. The story is fiction. And yet: Why shouldn’t the wish be hers?

About the Author

Rachel Khong
Rachel Khong is the author of Goodbye, Vitamin, win­ner of the California Book Award for First Fiction. Real Americans, her second novel, was a New York Times best­seller. In 2018, Khong founded The Ruby, a work and event space for women and nonbinary writers and artists in San Francisco’s Mission District. With friends, she teaches creative writing as The Dream Side. She lives in Los Angeles. More by Rachel Khong
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