
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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The Husbands
- A Novel
- By: Holly Gramazio
- Narrated by: Miranda Raison
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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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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Exhibit
- A Novel
- By: R. O. Kwon
- Narrated by: Ami Park, Sue Jean Kim
- Length: 5 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
At a lavish party in the hills outside of San Francisco, Jin Han meets Lidija Jung and nothing will ever be the same for either woman. A brilliant young photographer, Jin is at a crossroads in her work, in her marriage to her college love Philip, and in who she is and who she wants to be. Lidija is an alluring, injured world-class ballerina on hiatus from her ballet company under mysterious circumstances. Drawn to each other by their intense artistic drives, the two women talk all night.
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Boring
- By JB1214 on 03-04-25
By: R. O. Kwon
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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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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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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Women of Good Fortune
- By: Sophie Wan
- Narrated by: Catherine Ho
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Bride-to-be Lulu is about to marry Shanghai’s most eligible bachelor. She just has one secret: she isn't in love and is only marrying him under pressure to fix her family’s financial issues. But for Lulu and her two best friends, her upcoming nuptials may offer a different opportunity entirely…
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Such a cute story
- By L. Katz on 03-08-24
By: Sophie Wan
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Their Divine Fires
- A Novel
- By: Wendy Chen
- Narrated by: Katharine Chin
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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For listeners of Pachinko and The Mountains Sing, a gorgeously poetic family saga that begins at the dawn of the Chinese Revolution and spans 100 years to trace the intricate lives of four generations of Chinese and Chinese American women grappling with history, obligations, betrayal, and love in order to come into their own power and learn not just how to survive but flourish.
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Confusing but lyrical
- By WPH on 09-17-24
By: Wendy Chen
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Five-Star Stranger
- A Novel
- By: Kat Tang
- Narrated by: Julian Cihi
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In an age where online ratings are all-powerful, Five-Star Stranger follows the adventures of a top-rated man on the Rental Stranger app—a place where users can hire a pretend fiancé, a wingman, or an extra mourner for a funeral. Referred to only as Stranger, the narrator navigates New York City under the guise of characters he plays, always maintaining a professional distance from his clients. But, when a nosy patron threatens to upend his long-term role as father to a young girl, Stranger begins to reckon with his attachment to his pretend daughter, her mother, and his own fraught past.
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Had good parts that kept me engaged.
- By C. Dad on 09-06-24
By: Kat Tang
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House of Many Gods
- A Novel
- By: Kiana Davenport
- Narrated by: Jolene Kim
- Length: 15 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Progressing from the 1960s to the turbulent present, the novel begins on the island of O’ahu and centers on Ana, abandoned by her mother as a child. Raised by her extended family on the “lawless” Wai’anae coast, west of Honolulu, Ana, against all odds, becomes a physician. While tending victims of Hurricane ‘Iniki on the neighboring island of Kaua’i, she meets Nikolai, a Russian filmmaker with a violent and tragic past, who can confront reality only through his unique prism of lies. Yet he is dedicated to recording the ecological horrors in his motherland.
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Stunning!!!
- By Cat In The Hat on 10-29-23
By: Kiana Davenport
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The Friend Zone Experiment
- By: Zen Cho
- Narrated by: Rebecca Yeo
- Length: 11 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
From the outside, Renee Goh’s life looks perfect. She’s thirty and beautiful, runs a glamorous—and profitable—women’s clothing company in London, and is dating a hot Taiwanese pop star. But Renee is lonely. Estranged from her family in Singapore, she practically lives at the office, and now she’s just been dumped by her supposed boyfriend. Who she never saw anyway, so why is she ruining her Instagram-ready makeup by crying? Before she can curl up on the couch with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, Renee’s father calls.
By: Zen Cho
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What I Know About You
- By: Éric Chacour, Pablo Strauss - translator
- Narrated by: Nabil Traboulsi
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In a tight-knit Levantine Christian family in 1960s Cairo, Tarek’s entire life is written in advance. He’ll be a doctor like his father, marry, and have children. Under the watchful eye of the family’s strong women, he starts to do just that–until a patient’s son, Ali, enters his life and turns it upside down. The two men’s unsayable relationship sparks a series of events as dramatic as the Six-Day War and assassination of President Anwar Sadat playing out in the background.
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Great story.
- By Amazon Customer on 02-19-25
By: Éric Chacour, and others
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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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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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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River East, River West
- A Novel
- By: Aube Rey Lescure
- Narrated by: David Shih, Jennifer Lim
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Shanghai, 2007: Fourteen-year-old Alva has always longed for more. Raised by her American expat mother, she’s never known her Chinese father, and is certain a better life awaits them in America. But when her mother announces her engagement to their wealthy Chinese landlord, Lu Fang, Alva’s hopes are dashed, and so she plots for the next best thing: the American School in Shanghai.
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Did not connect with the characters
- By Maryanne T. on 04-18-24
By: Aube Rey Lescure
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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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Overall
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Performance
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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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Good Material
- A Novel
- By: Dolly Alderton
- Narrated by: Arthur Darvill, Vanessa Kirby
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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
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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beautiful storytelling
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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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