Real Americans by Rachel Khong: Ambitious Family Saga
My Review of Real Americans by Rachel Khong looks at this ambitious Multigenerational saga by the author of Goodbye Vitamin. Is this book What to Read After YA? Let’s explore!
Overview of Real Americans by Rachel Khong
- Published by Knopf in April 2024.
- 410 pages
- Selected by Read With Jenna as the May 2024 book club pick
- Thanks to the publisher for providing an advance copy for review.
- As of the publication of this post, Real Americans by Rachel Khong had a 4.1 Goodreads rating
Summary of Real Americans by Rachel Khong
Real Americans focuses on three generations of the Chen family: matriarch Mei, who fled China during the Cultural Revolution, her daughter Lily, living and falling in love in New York in the early 2000s, and Lily’s son Nick, a high school student living in the Pacific Northwest.
Analysis of Real Americans
Real Americans has three distinct parts: part one is Lily’s POV in 1999 and is a whirlwind romance. Part two is told by Nick in 2021 and is reads like an angsty teen coming-of-age story. Part three is told by Mei in the future (2030).
In a typical family saga, interactions and family drama are the drivers of the story. But the interesting (or weird) thing to me about Real Americans was the minimal amount of interaction between these three. At times the book felt like three separate stories about people who barely knew each other. The stories are also told out of order (part 3 technically takes place in 2030 but it’s all about what happened in the 1970s.)
Every reader of this book seems to have their favorite character/part and none of us agree. Though I lived Lily’s life when I got to NYC, scrounging free food and such, I have to say that Nick’s college tours had me laughing-crying. Mei’s part was obviously the most harrowing, but I wasn’t really ready for that after all Nick’s comic shenanigans.
The story also had an unexpected element of magical realism or sci-fi that I really wasn’t expecting and that felt a little out of nowhere.
What did other readers think about Real Americans?
Some readers absolutely loved the story, finding it moving and immersive. Others loved the richness and scope of its portrayal of the immigrant, first-gen and second-gen experience in America.
Others found the changes in tone jarring and the narrative structure jumbled.
More Books by Rachel Khong:
Khong published Goodbye Vitamin in 2017:
- California Book Award for First Fiction (Gold) (2017)
- Los Angeles Times Book Prize Nominee for Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction (2017),
- Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Debut Goodreads Author (2017)
Is The Real Americans one of YOUR Books to Read After YA?
If you have enjoyed YA books that really delve into intergenerational trauma and/or the immigrant experience, like The Firekeeper’s Daughter series by Angeline Bully, Only This Beautiful Moment by Abdi Nazemian, or All My Rage by Saaba Tahir
If you’ve enjoyed adult multigenerational sagas like Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides, White Teeth by Zadie Smith, Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, or Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner, give this a try!
