finished reading

Spanning three generations this story is told from each generation's perspective but not in the way I expected.  It begins with Lily's story--a first generation Chinese-American.  I didn't quite connect with Lily.  The story's second section is told from Nick, Lily's son, perspective.  I liked the voice of a fifteen-year-old and his struggle to find his place as a biracial youth.  The third section is Nick's grandmother, May the Chinese immigrant's story.  May's story is sometimes harrowing coming of age in Maoist China and the Cultural Revolution.  But each character makes choices that had me scratching my head--I just didn't understand what I considered selfish behavior.

It's a character-driven story.  There is an element of magical realism that I questioned.  And a few plot elements that I don't want to spoil. The audiobook is wonderfully narrated.  This would be a great book group discussion.

From the publisher:

Real Americans begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when 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.

In 2021, 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 asks: Are we destined, or made, and if so, who gets to do the making? Can our genetic past be overcome?