Real Americans

Rounded up from 3.75

This book is three sections, each told from a different characters point of view. I enjoyed my time inside each section but found the transition jarring and a bit clunky. I did not enjoy that last 50 or so pages and was not here for the ending - it just ended. I don't need everything tied up in a bow but I like some semblance of a conclusion. I felt like this ending just dropped you off a cliff.

This book is about belonging, class, race, immigration and gender with a bit of generational trauma thrown in. Lily's point of view was probably my favorite but I enjoyed Nick's and May's as well. It was interesting to read a bit about life life in China under Mao.

Audio was done well.

A story that follows a three different people and eras. First we have Lily, a girl born in America to Chinese immigrant parents. As someone who can’t even speak Mandarin, she struggles with feeling like an American yet not being perceived as one by the people around her.

The story then jumps forward to Lily’s son, Noah, who looks identical to his white Dad. He identifies as half-Chinese, but everyone only sees him as an American, and he struggles with this gap in his identity.

The third character is Lily’s mother, May, who takes us on a time-skip back to 1950s China. May’s struggles are more real and immediate as she lives through the harsh poverty caused by the Cultural Revolution.

There’s a secondary plot around genetic engineering, and developing the ability for certain genes to be more dominant when giving birth, as well as this weird magical ability the characters have to (occasionally) slow down time - although they don't really use it much at all. I think that magical side-plot should either have been expanded upon more, or cut out altogether, because I didn’t feel like it added much to the story.

As a fellow half-Asian I related the most to Noah’s story. We have Lily who so desperately wants to fit in and feel included as an American by her peers, and yet Noah, who has the comfort of already being accepted, instead wants to be recognized for his differences. Is your identify something that you decide for yourself, or is partially influenced or constructed by the people around you?

Probably my favorite book I've read this year, due in no small part to how captivating I found Rachel Khong's writing to be. I had heard this billed as part romance novel, part inter-generational family story, and it was that, but Rachel was able to make each person's perspective so captivating within itself that I would have loved to read more on any one of the three main narrators.

The book starts with Lily, which is where the romance part takes place. I loved Lily pretty immediately. Despite her tale taking place in the late 90's and early 2000s she felt so modern and relatable to people her age today. I was so interested in where her story was going to go and page after page wanted to hear more of her inner monologue. I loved watching her romance with Matthew bud, I loved seeing the two expose themselves to one another, and I loved them questioning the families they were born to as well. I especially loved seeing Lily progressively explore the people in her life as she got older. She began to see more and more microaggressions against Asian people, which was fascinating and insightful. She began to see the frays of her family's treatment of her as she grew up. This and more, I truly loved Lily's half of the book and was frankly sad it ended as abruptly as it did.

Next it flung us forward in time to follow Nick. Nick himself was so interesting to follow. I loved how relatable he felt as a teenager, but without feeling like "just another teen" rebelling in his own way--He was very vindicated. As a person of mixed race, white-passing myself, I felt a kinship with some of his issues, though they went far further than my own. I really loved this part of not only Nick's story but of the larger one on display in this book. It was especially fascinating seeing Lily in this time period and how she developed past her story's ending.

I won't speak about the final part, but this would be the weakest part of the book in some ways, in my eyes. It was a bit slow and was when I started to lose interest at some small parts, but it was by far the most illuminating too. It provided context for all the other stories as well as serving as a neat conclusion to them as well, and was so interesting in how it was executed.

In the end, Lily stands out as my favorite character from all of this. I loved seeing her story unfold, and as some small twists that explain her behavior at points unfold I felt so sympathetic to her. Some of the last pieces written about her were in some ways so sad, but it gave me such relief to see her at least at peace with herself and her life in the end. I would so have loved to read more about her alone, but of any of the characters in this book.

I try to keep my reviews on the shorter end, but I feel like I could not get enough of this book, truly. I wasn't finished by the time I closed the cover on this one.

Divided into three parts, each focusing on one character from the main family. The first two were fantastic, but the third a fair amount weaker, and the ending I felt wasn't great (we don't get much resolution between Nick and Matthew). It was also a bit weird how cold and distant a lot of the characters were towards their family, seemingly only for plot purposes. But overall I still really enjoyed it.

I really enjoyed Lily and Nick's POVs but Mei's was a little harder to follow for me. On the one hand I wasn't a fan of Mei's parts but on the other hand it also went to show that Khong can give different characters their unique voices and flairs which is always impressive.

Sprawling family sagas aren't my thing but it was done exceptionally well here and with such a reasonable number of pages I'm really impressed with how organic and unrushed the storytelling came across as. Seriously, with the topics this book approaches I expected it to be on the ponderous and slightly pretentious side but it was neither, I found it almost charming (oddly enough) and entirely unpretentious. On a technical aspect I would absolutely give this one a 5/5.

It was my first time reading this author and it will certainly not be the last.

I feel like I've missed the point of the story, that the considered discourse around the weighty themes of the novel eluded me. I went in buoyed by the sheer love I had for her debut novel Goodbye Vitamin. Once again I found myself carried through the story by the confident and lovely prose. But I just couldn't seem to find a foothold into the story. The first third feels like a will-they-won't-they Crazy Rich Asians pastiche only to switch gears in the second part leaving a sizeable gap that alludes to something nefarious. Again, I enjoyed the coming of age story, but there were dark corners that seemed to promise something more.

I think the story could have worked just as well, if not better, without the genetic technology through-line. That just as much work could have been done without the vague scientific MacGuffin that pervades the narrative. Alternately, the genre elements could have provided firm scaffolding instead of the slight filigree it amounted to. If we're going to mess with genetics let's really lean into the stakes. I wanted to like this more.