“Real Americans” by Rachel Khong
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.
Review
This was a really interesting book. It’s a bit slow in places but completely worth it. I actually liked the last section of the book best which is May’s story (Lily’s mother/Nick’s Grandmother). It may seem strange to tell the book in that order but I think it really makes a solid point about how children can grow up questioning their parents’ choices and being resentful, without the full context of why the choices were made.
There are a lot of themes in the book with the biggest ones being about immigration and assimilation to a new country. Lily’s parents made a lot of choices when they arrived in the United States that had an impact down through the generations. One of those choices was to never teach Lily their own language. Which you end up seeing the consequences of when Lily goes to visit China and cannot speak to the people there.
There is also a thread of eugenics in the book that is not talked about in depth but is always there. Again choices were made that had an impact on both Lily and Nick. There’s a lot there that could be talked about but one of the main ideas is that choices can result in far reaching consequences.
The ending is one of the more abrupt endings that I’ve read, but I also think it works well for the book. I liked that we got to know that it’s possible that things could be resolved for the family members.
Additional reviews and warnings can be found on the StoryGraph page for “Real Americans”.
Book Details
- Author’s Website
- Rachel Khong
- Publisher / Date
- Knopf, April 2024
- Genre
- General Fiction
- Page Count
- 416
- Completion Date
- September 5, 2025