Newport Book Club meets the first Tuesday of the month at 7 pm. This month, we are reading 'Real Americans' by Rachel Khong.
Real Americans begins on the precipice of the year 2000 in New York City, when 22-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 could not be more different: flat-broke, raised in Tampa and the only child of scientists who fled Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Despite all this, Lily and Matthew fall in love.
In 2021, 15-year-old Nick Chen has never felt like he belonged on the isolated Washington island where he lives with his single mother, Lily. He cannot shake the sense that she is hiding something. When Nick sets out to find his biological father, the journey threatens to raise more questions than answers.
In immersive, moving prose, Rachel Khong weaves a profound tale of class and striving, race and visibility and family and inheritance. It is a story of trust, forgiveness and finally coming home.
Exuberant and explosive, Real Americans is a social novel that asks: are we destined, or made? If so, who gets to do the making? Can our genetic past be overcome?
If you have any questions about this program, including accommodations, please contact Valerie at nwprograms@cc-pl.org. Please see all our program offerings in our online newsletter at cc-pl.org/connections.
AGE GROUP: | Adult |
EVENT TYPE: | Book Clubs |
