Read Real Americans

Read online Real Americans.pdf PDF, EPUB, MOBI, TXT, DOC Real Americans 4.5 stars. I've had this book on my Netgalley shelf for ages, and I don't know why I didn't read it sooner.This book can mean a number of things to you: wealth and the middle class, falling in love, immigrants, being Chinese and born into both unfortunate and fortunate circumstances, science and DNA, or all of the above.Real Americans by Rachel Khong is a story told in three parts. The first can be considered a story of two very different people falling in love. The second can be about a young man finding out who he is, and the last is about a Chinese matriarch born into communist China. All three stories interconnect by fate, fruition, and discovering oneself. Lily, when we first meet her, is an unpaid intern who falls in love with the heir to a pharmaceutical company (think Bayer). She is a Chinese-American woman, broke, unsure of her next path in life, but along comes Matthew. Whether or not he falls first or if she does, doesn't matter. They are together by both love and fate.Nick, a young man destined to get away from his overprotective mom, by applying for colleges far from the Seattle based island he grew up on. May, a grandmother living in Chinatown, San Francisco, with her own immigrant story to tell.All three people are connected in ways that will leave you guessing. While I didn't care as much for the science backstory, I loved that this story was about love and coming of age. Those were the parts that had me wanting more. Khong's ability to write about America in the eye of someone coming to this country and working hard for the "dream" was exquisite."The men were exactly who I pictured when I imagined Americans, white men who looked like they meat at every meal.""Everything getting worse: inequality, corruption, racism. White supremacists were feeling threatened, lashing out, believing themselves to be the arbiters of who were and weren’t real Americans."All while, we learn what it's like to be raised as both a Chinese woman in America, versus one born and raised in China. Considering I am this person, Khong writes instances of assimilation mixed in with the harsh reality of having to balance both."When my mother was given a compliment about any of her children she had to immediately shoot it down, by calling attention to how ugly or stupid we truly were, and then to compliment the speaker’s offspring.""She never told me she loved me. It wasn’t the Chinese way. She showed her love to me in the way she defended my studies to my father, who would have preferred that I stay home and be married. She showed her love when she scolded me the most harshly.""We were an American family, my mother and I, and yet it wasn’t American, I thought, for her to love me as much as she did. Was it Chinese? It was some synthesis of the two—elements brought together, combined to form a new compound. So often I felt it was a burden, to be loved by her. Yet, here, without her, I missed her."Yet, in the end, I loved the story about falling in love the most. While others who read this may feel differently, perhaps this is what Khong intended to do - to make us wonder how falling in love can alter generations for years to come. Can we pick who we are and who we love by genetic default? Should we?"If I lost him, I thought then, feeling his cool breath against my hot arm, I would never recover."Picked as a book of the month by Jenna Bush, I'm so glad this will garner the attention it deserves. One of the best I've read this year. by Rachel Khong