59 pages • 1 hour read
Rachel KhongReal Americans
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Class and Belonging
Real Americans begins with a description of Lily and Matthew’s burgeoning romance, and because their class differences impact their relationship so profoundly, Class and Belonging emerges early on as a key theme. The author is interested in interrogating the way that class position shapes identity and relationship choices, and her discussion of class differences is nuanced. Lily’s family is highly educated but lacks resources. She herself pursues an art history degree and values education, but the limited opportunities available for graduates in her field become a source of stress for Lily. In her unpaid internship, she fixates on money, constantly calculating the cost of the job’s “perks” (like the company Christmas party) and comparing them to what it would cost the firm to pay its interns. Lily does not necessarily see herself as working class, but it is obvious to her that she lacks privilege. When she meets Matthew, she is both uneasy with his affluence and drawn to it. This is evident in many scenes but particularly in the moment when Matthew gifts her a designer dress. She observes, “It was perfect, it was the sort of dress that I wished I knew how to buy for myself, let alone had money for. It wasn’t the dress, it was what it represented, what he must have thought about me” (35). She loves the dress, but she fears that his giving it to her only highlights their class differences. She wonders if Matthew’s gift is a subtle indictment of her taste and background and ultimately feels judged by him, reflecting the sort of class anxiety experienced by working-class people when confronted with extreme wealth. Lily is motivated by the desire to belong. She never experiences belonging in her nuclear family, and part of her attraction to Matthew is the desire to be accepted within his family and social circle. However, she feels simultaneously drawn to Matthew’s friends and family and judged by them. Part of why their relationship becomes off and on is that Lily struggles to decide whether she truly belongs in Matthew’s world, and love frequently cannot overcome this class barrier.
Matthew, too, struggles with the impact of inherited wealth on his life and identity, and like Lily, he has never truly experienced belonging in his own family. Both of these characters struggle in some way with the class positions and nuclear family units that they were born into, although Matthew’s upbringing was characterized by far more privilege than Lily’s. Matthew’s discomfort with his family’s wealth can be seen in many of his actions: He gives Lily the prizes he wins at the company party and wants to pursue a relationship with her even though he understands the vast economic gulf that separates them. When his character is introduced, he is not using his father’s name in hopes of distancing himself from the family’s influence and fortune. Matthew is happy to give away large amounts of money, both through philanthropy and to Lily and his sons, and he seeks to define himself based on character rather than familial legacy. Matthew would like to be known as a kind, honest man rather than a wealthy one. At the same time, when presented with the choice between his family and Lily, he chooses his family, picking familial and class solidarity over love.
As their child, Nick also struggles with class and belonging. Lily moves with him to a small, remote island in part to put distance between them and Matthew, in part because she wants to escape the trappings of Matthew’s privileged and materialistic world. She raises Nick with a distinct, anti-materialist set of values, and although he understands the merits of this lifestyle, he also thinks that it sets him apart. It also literally isolates him from his father’s family, creating feelings of alienation. Nick craves normalcy and belonging, and he recalls shouting at his mother as a child that he just “wanted to be normal” (251). In part because he grew up with such a pronounced lack of resources, he is drawn to the affluent world of his Ivy League college. Like his mother, however, he is both attracted to and repulsed by wealth and privilege. He has the same push-pull relationship with his father that Lily does, and it is evident that Matthew’s abandonment is only part of what gives Nick pause about him. Like his mother, he is also unsure about whether he truly fits into Matthew’s world.
Immigration, Race, and Identity
Real Americans shows a marked interest in the intersection between race, immigration, and identity. The storyline centering around genetic research and gene editing works in service of this theme, and each member of the Chen family struggles with the way that both race and immigration shape who they are and what kind of experiences they have. Additionally, the choice to depict multiple generations of the same Chinese American family allows the author to craft a complex, nuanced portrait of the way that cultural and racial identities differ within first, second, and third generations in Asian American immigrant communities.
May and Charles are first-generation immigrants. They make the choice to leave China as a result of Mao’s repressive policies and the political upheaval of the Cultural Revolution. While they are both rooted in Chinese culture and traditions, they come to see their country as deeply fractured and feel that their future is not only in America but also as Americans. “American” holds a different meaning for each spouse. Charles locates his American identity within American popular culture, media, and culinary traditions. May, who is arguably more grounded within her identity as a scientist and intellectual, immerses herself in the English language and comes to define her identity in the idea of the American work ethic. Charles sees himself as American because he embraces the country’s surface-level culture, while May adopts its deeper values. They both jettison all traces of their Chinese identity and openly tell their new employers, “We may look Chinese, but we have no loyalty to China. We want to be American” (346). They bring this attitude to their parenting also, and Lily recalls a childhood steeped in American traditions and devoid of Chinese ones.
In a sense, it is easier for May and Charles to identify as American than it is for Lily. She, much more so than her parents, feels a sense of alienation in the United States because of her racial identity. She is perceived by many people she meets as a foreigner just because she is Asian, and unlike her parents, she does not locate American identity within beliefs, values, and practices as much as within whiteness, the racial category of America’s majority population group. For Lily, American identity is much more fraught than it is for her parents. She feels no particular connection to her Chinese heritage, and yet because she is Asian, it is assumed by many people that she is more Chinese than American.
Her son, Nick, also struggles with race and identity. Because of his grandparents’ gene-editing experiments, Nick presents as entirely white despite being half Chinese. He feels even less connected to his Chinese heritage than his mother because he is one more generation removed from China and because Lily herself was never given Chinese cultural knowledge to pass on to her child. When Nick comes to understand the role that gene editing played in his appearance and genetic makeup, he begins to think deeper about the politics of race and identity in the United States. When his colleagues at the biotech startup where he works begin to discuss gene editing in terms of race, his views further crystalize: Nick is the product of an interracial relationship, and his coworkers argue that gene editing has the potential to appeal to interracial couples who want their child to be whiter. This exchange highlights the role that white supremacy still plays within American culture, and Nick vows to do everything he can to prevent the technology from coming into use.
Fraught Family Relationships
Fraught family relationships are a key focal point within Real Americans, and its interest in the complexities of familial bonds also connects this book to Khong’s first novel, Goodbye, Vitamin. Each generation of the Chen and Maier families struggles with their interpersonal relationships. Chronologically, the first character to struggle in their family relationships is May. Born into an uneducated agricultural family, May feels alienated as a girl among so many brothers and as a highly gifted student in a school that provides only the bare minimum for students destined to become farmers and laborers. May does not feel at home with either of her parents or her siblings, and she recalls her mother’s parenting style as cold and unloving. May also comes to struggle in her marriage to Charles, whom she never truly loves and whom she chooses solely based on his ability to help her flee China. May does not want to become a mother, and although she tries her best to be a more accepting parent, she does not feel as though she has much in common with Lily. May chooses research over her family on multiple occasions throughout the novel, and it is only at the end of her life that she comes to understand how much she values her loved ones. She does reconcile with them, first with Nick and then, on her deathbed, with Lily. Through that reconciliation, the author suggests that it is possible to “fix” broken relationships.
Lily also struggles in her relationships, especially the one she has with her mother, May. From May’s perspective, Lily was unwanted and grew into a girl with whom she felt little connection. From Lily’s perspective, her mother set unreasonable goals and expectations for her and failed to actually see her as a complex, multifaceted individual. Lily shares her mother’s interest in education, but she does not perceive herself as intellectually gifted. Meanwhile, she remembers her mother deciding that she was highly intelligent and the difficulties that caused in their relationship: “She’d decided, back then, that I was remarkable. And I could not persuade her otherwise” (41). May does gradually let go of her dream of having a scientist daughter, but Lily feels the sting of rejection in her mother’s lack of support for her in her chosen field. She knows that her mother thinks that her art history degree is a waste of time, and when she gets a new job after college, May is disappointed that Lily is a “decorator’s assistant” (91). The discord between May and Lily is part of why Lily feels like such an outsider. She does experience alienation at work and in American society in general, but her first experience of alienation is within the space of her own nuclear family.
Fractured family relationships also characterize Lily’s marriage to Matthew and the way she struggles with their son, Nick. She is drawn to Matthew immediately, and while the two have a genuinely deep connection, their marriage ultimately fails, in part because she asks Matthew to choose between his family and her. From Lily’s perspective, Matthew’s refusal to hold his family accountable for performing gene editing on her and Nick without their knowledge or consent creates a permanent fault line—he is unwilling to protect them. For Matthew, who also struggles in his family relationships, uprooting himself from his family structure is a bridge too far, especially since he wants to use his family’s vast wealth to effect positive change. Because Lily chooses to keep the nature of their divorce a secret from Nick, she inadvertently damages her bond with him. Like both Lily and May before him, he feels a distinct sense of alienation from his mother. This makes the gene editing a symbol for intergenerational trauma in the novel, a violation performed by May that affects each subsequent generation. While Nick and Lily struggle with this tension, they also reconcile within the space of the narrative, and their relationship suggests that it is possible to overcome years of secrets and arrive at a place of post-conflict understanding.
