Real Americans: A Read with Jenna Pick

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?

On the eve of Y2K in New York City, 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. 

Twenty years later, 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 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 lays bare the question, what lies do we tell each other in order to love, and be loved?

“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

“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

“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

“Gorgeous, heartfelt, soaring, philosophical and deft, Real Americans turns 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
 
“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 pager 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