
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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Performance
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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 Husbands
- A Novel
- By: Holly Gramazio
- Narrated by: Miranda Raison
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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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 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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The Stone Home
- A Novel
- By: Crystal Hana Kim
- Narrated by: Jennifer Sun Bell, Sue Jean Kim, Intae Kim, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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In South Korea in the 1980s, young Eunju and her mother are homeless on the street. After being captured by the police, they’re sent to live within the walls of a state-sanctioned reformatory center that claims to rehabilitate the nation’s citizens but hides a darker, more violent reality.
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I gave up.
- By Dee Spee on 08-26-24
By: Crystal Hana Kim
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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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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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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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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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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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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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So good
- By Nik Lan on 05-05-25
By: Nikki May
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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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The Ministry of Time
- A Novel
- By: Kaliane Bradley
- Narrated by: George Weightman, Katie Leung
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.
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More than the sum of its parts but…
- By L. Williams on 05-17-24
By: Kaliane Bradley
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The Lion Women of Tehran
- By: Marjan Kamali
- Narrated by: Mozhan Navabi, Nikki Massoud
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing Ellie and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Lonely and bearing the brunt of her mother’s endless grievances, Ellie dreams of a friend to alleviate her isolation. Luckily, on the first day of school, she meets Homa, a kind, passionate girl with a brave and irrepressible spirit. Together, the two girls play games, learn to cook in the stone kitchen of Homa’s warm home, wander through the colorful stalls of the Grand Bazaar, and share their ambitions for becoming “lion women.”
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Wonderful story Awful Narration
- By Sogol on 08-14-24
By: Marjan Kamali
What listeners say about Real Americans
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- Julie M
- 06-10-24
Narrators Poor - Story Not Engrossing
I was hoping the hype was real. This story is a mixed bag, I really didn’t care about any characters.
The narrators often mispronounced words.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 06-07-24
Didn't do it for me
This was a book that a lot of people said made it to one of their greatest reads of the year. Sadly, it didn’t do the same for me. I loved the narration as I listened to this on audio. It is very easy to listen to. I was listening very intently up until the last leg when it switched to the 3rd POV. It just got boring for me. Am I alone in this?
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- aka: Kreussenheimer
- 06-09-24
Chinese perspective broadened my perspective.
Towards the end, the voices didn't seem to match the POV. It was confusing. Multiple stories converge in the end, getting there required paying attention.
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- Lauren Ling Brown
- 08-24-24
Multigenerational mystery and family drama
The book swept me up completely. Rachel Khong’s writing was absolutely beautiful and relatable as the daughter of a Chinese mother myself. The way that she wove three characters’ perspectives together was brilliant and the story itself made me want to stay up late into the night reading. I liked the first two sections/characters better than the third, but overall loved. Fabulous book and highly recommend!!
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- Sylvia Rohrer
- 08-21-24
Beautiful generational story
A compelling tale of a Chinese family's emigration to America and the generational cultural changes that they go through, as well as an interesting science twist.
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- Yael Goverover
- 02-03-25
Relationship story
I thought that the book was a bit shallow and very woke like. I didn’t like many of the ideas there, but there was some interesting parts related to relationships
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- Maria Graft
- 04-11-25
What a waste of time
Frustrated because this story literally said nothing. And left me with so many questions. I hated how all the characters repeated the same mistakes of their parents. I hated how people pushed people out of their lives who loved them and had done their best to love them, despite flaws and mistakes.
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- Amazon Customer
- 06-19-24
Missed the mark somehow
I found the story sad.
The characters were unfulfilled.
The title was a bit misleading.
The narrator’s voice was monotone.
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- Jewels
- 08-01-24
5 stars ⭐️ ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️🤯🤯🤯
Real Americans
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
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- ashelyn downs
- 06-25-24
beautiful storytelling
I loved this unique way of documenting the passage of time. This book was beautifully written and the characters had so many relatable life circumstances to my own family's, I found reading this through an outsider's perspective extremely insightful.
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