About this Event
Held in person at The Library in St. Pete on the third Tuesday of every month. This book club focuses on popular, yet compelling book club novels that spark connection and conversation.
Books are available in-person or online at the Oxford Exchange Bookstore.
Real Americans | Rachel Khong
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • 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?
The Library Book Club Titles
- January We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer
- February Come and Get It by Kiley Reid
- March Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas
- April Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
- May Real Americans by Rachel Khong
- June None of This is True by Lisa Jewell
- July All Fours by Miranda July
- August Annie Bot by Sierra Greer
- September Oye by Melissa Mogollon
- October The Coin by Yasmin Zaher
- November The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters
- December Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
The Library - inspired by the George Peabody Library, 600 5th Street South, St. Petersburg, United States
USD 39.23
