
Real Americans
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Louisa Zhu
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Eric Yang
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Eunice Wong
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By:
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Rachel Khong
About this listen
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • READ WITH JENNA’S MAY BOOK CLUB PICK • From the award-winning author of Goodbye, Vitamin: How far would you go to shape your own destiny? An exhilarating novel of American identity that spans three generations in one family and asks: What makes us who we are? And how inevitable are our futures?
"Mesmerizing"—Brit Bennett • "A page turner.”—Ha Jin • “Gorgeous, heartfelt, soaring, philosophical and deft"—Andrew Sean Greer • "Traverses time with verve and feeling."—Raven Leilani
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 it provides 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 we are made, who gets to do the making? Can our genetic past be overcome?
©2024 Rachel Khong (P)2024 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"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
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Story
When Lauren returns home to her flat in London late one night, she is greeted at the door by her husband, Michael. There’s only one problem—she’s not married. She’s never seen this man before in her life. But according to her friends, her much-improved decor, and the photos on her phone, they’ve been together for years.
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Ho hum pretty repetitive story
- By Lucy on 05-08-24
By: Holly Gramazio
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The Waters
- By: Bonnie Jo Campbell
- Narrated by: Lili Taylor
- Length: 14 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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On an island in the Great Massasauga Swamp—an area known as “The Waters” to the residents of nearby Whiteheart, Michigan—herbalist and eccentric Hermine “Herself” Zook has healed the local women of their ailments for generations. As stubborn as her tonics are powerful, Herself inspires reverence and fear in the people of Whiteheart, and even in her own three estranged daughters. The youngest—the beautiful, inscrutable, and lazy Rose Thorn—has left her own daughter, eleven-year-old Dorothy “Donkey” Zook, to grow up wild.
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Worse Book Of New Year
- By Steve B. on 01-13-24
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The Great Divide
- A Novel
- By: Cristina Henriquez
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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It is said that the canal will be the greatest feat of engineering in history. But first, it must be built. For Francisco, a local fisherman who resents the foreign powers clamoring for a slice of his country, nothing is more upsetting than the decision of his son, Omar, to work as a digger in the excavation zone. But for Omar, whose upbringing was quiet and lonely, this job offers a chance to finally find connection.
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Story went nowhere
- By Michelle Maple on 04-11-24
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Same as It Ever Was
- A Novel
- By: Claire Lombardo
- Narrated by: Emily Rankin
- Length: 18 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Julia Ames, after a youth marked by upheaval and emotional turbulence, has found herself on the placid plateau of mid-life. But Julia has never navigated the world with the equanimity of her current privileged class. Having nearly derailed herself several times, making desperate bids for the kind of connection that always felt inaccessible to her, she finally feels, at age fifty seven, that she has a firm handle on things. She’s unprepared, though, for what comes next.
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Long winded
- By Brooke on 09-17-24
By: Claire Lombardo
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Blue Sisters
- A Novel
- By: Coco Mellors
- Narrated by: Kit Griffiths
- Length: 14 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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The three Blue sisters are exceptional—and exceptionally different. Avery, the eldest and a recovering heroin addict turned strait-laced lawyer, lives with her wife in London; Bonnie, a former boxer, works as a bouncer in Los Angeles following a devastating defeat; and Lucky, the youngest, models in Paris while trying to outrun her hard-partying ways. They also had a fourth sister, Nicky, whose unexpected death left the family reeling. A year later, as they each navigate grief, addiction and ambition, they find they must return to New York to stop the sale of the apartment they were raised in.
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Love Coco Mellors, HATED the narration
- By Sally Fortson on 09-10-24
By: Coco Mellors
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Good Material
- A Novel
- By: Dolly Alderton
- Narrated by: Arthur Darvill, Vanessa Kirby
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Andy loves Jen. Jen loved Andy. And he can't work out why she stopped. Now he is. . . Without a home Waiting for his stand-up career to take off Wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking. Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of his ruined relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him. But Andy still has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story…
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not what I expected
- By Amazon Customer on 05-01-24
By: Dolly Alderton
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Sandwich
- A Novel
- By: Catherine Newman
- Narrated by: Nan McNamara
- Length: 5 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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For the past two decades, Rocky has looked forward to her family’s yearly escape to Cape Cod. Their humble beach-town rental has been the site of sweet memories, sunny days, great meals, and messes of all kinds. This year’s vacation, with Rocky sandwiched between her half-grown kids and fully aging parents, promises to be just as delightful as summers past—except, perhaps, for Rocky’s hormonal bouts of rage and melancholy. Her body is changing—her life is, too. And then a chain of events sends Rocky into the past, reliving both the tenderness and sorrow of a handful of long-ago summers.
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Stoppppppp Already!
- By Tara L. Darbyshire on 06-22-24
By: Catherine Newman
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April May June July
- By: Alison B. Hart
- Narrated by: Kristen Sieh
- Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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April, May, June, and July Barber don’t have much in common anymore. An upcoming family wedding will place the four siblings in the same room for the first time in years. But shortly before, when April spots their father, who went missing while serving overseas a decade ago, their reunion becomes entirely more complicated. While the siblings’ search for the truth about their father forces them back into each other’s lives, it also intensifies their private dramas.
By: Alison B. Hart
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Sex and Vanity
- A Novel
- By: Kevin Kwan
- Narrated by: Lydia Look
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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The iconic author of the best-selling phenomenon Crazy Rich Asians returns with the glittering tale of a young woman who finds herself torn between two men: the WASPY fiancé of her family's dreams and George Zao, the man she is desperately trying to avoid falling in love with.
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Gorgeous
- By Jess on 07-05-20
By: Kevin Kwan
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Bone of the Bone
- Essays on America by a Daughter of the Working Class
- By: Sarah Smarsh
- Narrated by: Sarah Smarsh
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Sarah Smarsh brings her graceful storytelling and incisive critique to the challenges that define our times—class division, political fissures, gender inequality, environmental crisis, media bias, the rural-urban gulf. Smarsh, a journalist who grew up on a wheat farm in Kansas and was the first in her family to graduate from college, has long focused on cultural dissonance that many in her industry neglected until recently.
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An American voice seldom heard
- By Amazon Customer on 03-29-25
By: Sarah Smarsh
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Camp Zero
- A Novel
- By: Michelle Min Sterling
- Narrated by: Graham Halstead, Greta Jung, Emily Tremaine
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In remote northern Canada, a team led by a visionary American architect is breaking ground on a building project called Camp Zero, intended to be the beginning of a new way of life. A clever and determined young woman code-named Rose is offered a chance to join the Blooms, a group hired to entertain the men in camp—but her real mission is to secretly monitor the mercurial architect in charge. In return, she’ll receive a home for her climate-displaced Korean immigrant mother and herself.
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Too close to zero
- By jluna on 04-17-23
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This Motherless Land
- A Novel
- By: Nikki May
- Narrated by: Weruche Opia, Florence Howard
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Quiet Funke is happy in Nigeria. She loves her art teacher mother, her professor father, and even her annoying little brother (most of the time). But when tragedy strikes, she’s sent to England, a place she knows only from her mother’s stories. To her dismay, she finds the much-lauded estate dilapidated, the food tasteless, the weather grey. Worse still, her mother’s family are cold and distant. With one exception: her cousin Liv.
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Details
- By Susan S. on 05-19-25
By: Nikki May
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The Original Daughter
- A Novel
- By: Jemimah Wei
- Narrated by: Eunice Wong
- Length: 13 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Before Arin, Genevieve Yang was an only child. Living with her parents and grandmother in a single-room flat inworking-class Singapore, Genevieve is saddled with an unexpected sibling when Arin appears, the shameful legacy of a grandfather long believed to be dead. As the girls grow closer, they must navigate the intensity of life in a brutally competitive place where the insistence on achievement demands constant sacrifice.
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Unlikable protagonist
- By Cindy Buckel on 05-20-25
By: Jemimah Wei
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Homeseeking
- By: Karissa Chen
- Narrated by: Katharine Chin, Kenneth Lee
- Length: 17 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Haiwen is buying bananas at a 99 Ranch Market in Los Angeles when he looks up and sees Suchi, his Suchi, for the first time in sixty years. To recently widowed Haiwen it feels like a second chance, but Suchi has only survived by refusing to look back. Suchi was seven when she first met Haiwen in their Shanghai neighborhood, drawn by the sound of his violin. Their childhood friendship blossomed into soul-deep love, but when Haiwen secretly enlisted in the Nationalist army in 1947 to save his brother from the draft, she was left with just his violin and a note: Forgive me.
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Vivid characters, uniquely delivered histories
- By Cherry D. on 04-23-25
By: Karissa Chen
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Long Island Compromise
- A Novel
- By: Taffy Brodesser-Akner
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Taffy Brodesser-Akner
- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1980, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway, brutalized, and held for ransom. He is returned to his wife and kids less than a week later, only slightly the worse, and the family moves on with their lives, resuming their prized places in the saga of the American dream, comforted in the realization that though their money may have been what endangered them, it is also what assured them their safety.
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We need more from Taffy Brodesser-Akner!
- By Ximena Enriquez on 08-31-24
The narrators often mispronounced words.
Narrators Poor - Story Not Engrossing
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Didn't do it for me
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Chinese perspective broadened my perspective.
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Multigenerational mystery and family drama
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Beautiful generational story
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Relationship story
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What a waste of time
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The characters were unfulfilled.
The title was a bit misleading.
The narrator’s voice was monotone.
Missed the mark somehow
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Was told just to start reading without see what it was about and so glad I did💗💗💗what a beautifully written story told in three parts…. All I’m going to say
5 stars ⭐️ ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️🤯🤯🤯
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beautiful storytelling
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