Real Americans by Rachel Khong
Real Americans presses into the crevices between generations, thickening the connective tissues with stories of befores and afters, whys and wherefores.
Over the course of the novel, spanning three generations and fifty years, Khong hands the narrative reigns over to her main characters in sections. Aside from a prologue-like beginning, we first meet Lily Chen, a 22-year-old New Yorker who is a first generation American. It’s 1999 and Lily carries us through some turn-of-the-century milestones: Y2K, 9/11, among others. When Lily meets Matthew and the two fall in love, the path ahead for them seems laid out. But, just as we’ve gotten settled into the story following the birth of Matthew and Lily’s son, Khong delivers the reader over to the future of 2021 with 15-year-old Nick Chen at the helm.
Nick lives in Washington with his mother, Lily, and has never known his father. As he goes through the pangs of late teenagedom and early adulthood, he tries to reach out to meet his dad.
Lastly, we get to hear from May / Mei, Lily’s mother — both from now and from decades before, as she relays her past in a sort of oral retelling of how and why she emigrated from China.
A really interesting aspect for me was the way Khong crafted and revealed her characters. For instance, Lily isn’t a fully-formed person, with agency and self-awareness, until she is no longer the narrator. It wasn’t until I could see her in the shadows of Nick’s story that Lily felt real and filled in with more vibrant, knowable colors. But a lot of the major plot points felt forced, and almost everyone beyond this trio of MCs remained distant and half-realized.
Khong goes after a lot in this novel, coming at it indirectly. It’s as if she just has so much to say, but not quite enough structure in which to say it. Her style was odd and a little hard to get into — with a whiff of a bullet-style delivery, pelting the reader with characterizations and scene settings, while keeping the narrator a little closed off and distant. It’s the kind where you’re either immediately going to get right into it and not notice it, or you will notice the entire time. She hints at deep understandings and ideas, but I never felt like we quite got there. The entirety of Real Americans feels like she held back; she knew the right questions, but hesitated to ask.
I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This affected neither my opinion of the book nor the content of my review.
