About this Event
Real Americans is a sweeping, multigenerational story about a family trying to shape their own destiny. In immersive, moving prose, Khong weaves a profound tale of class and striving, race and visibility, and family and inheritance, asking—what does it mean to be American? And are we destined, or made?
The story begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when Lily Chen meets Matthew, heir to the Maier pharmaceutical empire. They fall in love, not knowing that their relationship will resurface decades’ worth of family secrets. Nearly 20 years later, Lily is a single mother raising her son Nick on an isolated Washington island. When Nick sets out to find his biological father, the journey threatens to raise more questions than it provides answers.
Describing the novel herself, Khong writes, “Real Americans is about an American family, and explores the myth of the American experiment. It’s about the systems we live in, and about our own sites of agency. It’s a book about luck, fortune, and fate…I wrote the book because I have so many questions—and have them still—about being human and being alive, and being American.”
This novel has everything—complicated relationships with mothers, layers of family secrets, fascinating science paired with questionable ethics, elements of magical realism, and throughout it all, mesmerizing characters that draw you in and anchor this exhilarating story.
Rachel Khong is the author of Goodbye, Vitamin, winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction, and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR; O, The Oprah Magazine; Vogue; and Esquire. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Cut, The Guardian, The Paris Review, and Tin House. In 2018, she founded The Ruby, a work and event space for women and nonbinary writers and artists in San Francisco’s Mission District. She lives in California.
Kawai Strong Washburn was born and raised on the Hamakua coast of the Big Island of Hawai’i. His first novel, Sharks in the Time of Saviors, Won the 2021 PEN/Hemingway award for debut novel and the 2021 Minnesota Book Award; it was also longlisted for the 2020 Center For Fiction First Novel Prize and was a finalist for the 2021 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. Former US President Barack Obama chose it as a favorite novel of 2020, and it was selected as a notable or best book of the year by over a dozen publications, including the New York Times and Boston Globe. Washburn lives with his wife and two daughters in Minneapolis.
About Events at M&Q:
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Magers & Quinn Booksellers, 3038 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis, United States
USD 0.00
