What remains of the legacy when expectations and generational hope blur the lines of choice? Real Americans by Rachel Khong aims to explore the depth of family, identity, and the ethics of scientific intervention across multiple generations. The novel dives into these three sections, each pertaining to a different era within a Chinese-American family.
The first section follows Lily Chen, a young woman torn between belonging and ambition. As she tries to build a life on her own terms, she struggles to grow in her identity as a Chinese-American in the 1990s. Her story encapsulates the struggle to reconcile her Chinese heritage with her American upbringing, exhibiting the difficult circumstances of life and defining one’s identity in a world that’s quick to label others.
Khong layers Lily’s story to explain how self-discovery and assimilation often come at emotional costs, essentially leading to the thought process of who she really is when defined as an individual. However, the story amidst the topic of identity on being a daughter of immigrants, her experiences and emotional depth felt distant. Though understandable, it’s not quite something I could fervently connect to.
The second section of the novel centers on Nick, Lily’s son. His story follows introspective themes of sole principles and inheritance, displaying various unanswered questions from the past that continue to shape the present, reflecting his current life. Nick is a college student who is portrayed to be in constant confusion about who he is and where he fits in, as readers are able to examine what it means to inherit emotional values, such as silence.
Throughout his section, we shift perspectives from one generation where confusion arises due to individuality, to a personal understanding of the definition of feeling chained to a life that was built from others’ fragments. He leads the story to the larger question of what it truly means to be “real” in both an emotional and biological sense.
The final section, told from Grandmother May’s perspective, connects the story back to the first generation, revealing how it truly started the entire narrative of a family. Once a scientist driven by ambition and hope of building a better future, May’s choices lead to the creation of a complicated family legacy.
Her portrayal examines the intersections of science and morality, covering topics on the lengths someone will go to protect the people they love, and how those actions can shape future generations. May’s reflections tie ethics, control and progress to love and protection, which are strongly guided by both her hopes and fears.
Through these three narratives, Real Americans constructs a portrait of generational influences: emotional values that are unspoken, to the struggles of each individual and where they belong. A different kind of inheritance is reflected within the sections, whether it is cultural, emotional, or scientific; they build to show that not all people are born with certainty. However, the novel’s tone felt quite flat to me, each character feeling distant than what the reader would hope to gain by the end.
There were too many subplots that were mentioned, then never answered as we delved deeper into the storyline. It only brought out more questions and confusion, revealing actions from characters that were out of character. I was unable to understand the plot completely by the time I reached Nick’s section.
Overall, Khong goes into such precise detail about irrelevant points in the novel that the book misses the mark, and characters feel shallow. There is constant commentary about issues that do not align or pertain to the story’s implied message, which was rather disappointing. The lack of explanation of such crucial events made me believe I had been only skimming through the pages of the novel, which resulted in an unsatisfying read.