Real Americans

BEIJING, 1966 

She isn t afraid, but he is. They stand, in the darkness, before a glass case of old things. A Ming dynasty inkstone. A chrysanthemum carved from horn. A Song painting stamped with ruby-red collector s seals. And on a silk pillow, so slight it could be missed: an ancient lotus seed with a legend behind it. 

The story goes like this: One night, long ago, a dragon emerged from the sky and dropped this seed into the emperor s open hand. His advisors huddled near to examine it. What fortune! they remarked. This seed would grant the emperor his greatest wish. Unfortunately, he died that night, while contemplating his options. He might have asked for immortality. 

She takes a hammer from her knapsack. With all her strength, she strikes the glass. It makes a beautifully clear sound as it shatters. Quickly, the two get to work, securing the relics. It is an attempt to spare them from the Red Guards destruction an act of protest, small, against a movement she s no match for. 

The seed is unspectacular, so old it resembles a stone. Yet she s aware it contains an entire future: roots, stems, leaves, blooms, to seeds once more encoded, like she is. Her heart pumps blood, her lungs take in air, she sleeps, wakes, eats, excretes. Will her life be long or short? What has she chosen, she wonders, and what has chosen her? She likes the fragrance of gardenias, but not the scent of lipstick. She doesn t mind the rain. She is in love, which feels, to her, at once easy and hard, elemental and ungraspable like vanishing and eternity at the same time. She wants to ask of every person she meets: Is it this way for you?

Hurry, her companion says. 

A door slams, loudly. Someone is here. The footsteps draw closer. They flee. 

Outside, she opens her fist. On her bleeding palm rests a stolen seed. The story is fiction. And yet: Why shouldn t the wish be hers?

RACHEL KHONG is the author of Goodbye, Vitamin, winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR; O, The Oprah Magazine; Vogue; and Esquire. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Cut, The Guardian, The Paris Review, and Tin House. In 2018, she founded The Ruby, a work and event space for women and nonbinary writers and artists in San Francisco’s Mission District. She lives in California.

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2024, at publications including: The New York Times, Oprah Daily, Today, TIME, and more!

"If you liked Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, read Real Americans by Rachel Khong." The Washington Post

"It's a tale as old as time: Poor girl meets rich boy, they fall in love, and they live happily ever after. Well, not quite... A profound read." People

"Remarkable... Folded into [Real Americans] are doomed love stories, fancy parties, a subplot about epigenetics, Chinese people who look white and yummy treats... The book also poses a dizzying array of questions: What does it mean to be American, and who gets to say who is one? Robert Ito, The New York Times

A masterful, shape-shifting novel about multiracial identity .What makes Americans 'real'? Is it our competitive drive? Our craving for wealth and status? Our insatiable quest for scientific advancement? Or is it inevitably the color of our skin and eyes?... [Rachel] Khong manages these twisting threads with masterful deftness.... [An] irresistible puzzle of a novel." Aimee Liu, Los Angeles Times

"[Rachel] Khong layers the lives of her characters to challenge how well we can really know one another... [Khong] captures the feeling of floating in the in-between, not firmly tethered to one pole of identity or another but instead looking for a way to feel secure in your own space... And that title Real Americans evokes more questions than any single book could answer. What is American, and what is real?" Lucy Feldman, TIME

"Real Americans is both a novel of ideas and of beautiful sentences. Khong's prose is a pleasure to read... even as the questions she raises are chilling, indeed." May-lee Chai, Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Riveting in its unexpected turns, Real Americans is a novel about past mistakes and their echoes and a reminder that those histories need not be binding."