- New Arrivals
Fiction- Historical FictionCrime & ThrillersMysteryScience-FictionFantasyPoetryRomanceChildren’s BooksYoung Adult
- Biographies & MemoirsHistoryCurrent AffairsTech & ScienceBusinessSelf-DevelopmentTravelThe ArtsFood & WineReligion & SpiritualitySportsHumor
ListsGift CardsWhat To ReadMy Lists- About & Help
- About Tertulia
- Membership & Co-Ownership
- Shipping & Delivery
- Orders & Payments
- Contact Support
- Send App Feedback
- Follow us
- Download the app
The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Real Americans
Reader Score
82%
82% of readers
recommend this book
Critic Reviews
Good
Based on 12 reviews on
2024 The New York Times Best Seller
Included in Read with Jenna Book Club
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - READ WITH JENNA'S MAY BOOK CLUB PICK - 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?
Book Details
- Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
- Publish Date: Apr 30th, 2024
- Pages: 416
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 9.37in - 6.14in - 1.57in - 1.50lb
- EAN: 9780593537251
- Categories: • Asian American & Pacific Islander• Family Life - General• Cultural Heritage
About the Author
RACHEL KHONG is the author of Goodbye, Vitamin, winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR; O, The Oprah Magazine; Vogue; and Esquire. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Cut, The Guardian, The Paris Review, and Tin House. In 2018, she founded The Ruby, a work and event space for women and nonbinary writers and artists in San Francisco's Mission District. She lives in California.
Critics’ reviews
Praise for this book
"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
"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