Before publishing her novel 'Real Americans,' Rachel Khong talked to fellow author Rita Bullwinkel about writing the intergenerational epic.
, asks: what if we could control what genes we passed down to our children? How do what others see in us affect how we perceive ourselves?is a brilliant, sprawling, maximalist, multigenerational novel that spans three generations from Moaist China to post-pandemic San Francisco. It’s somehow historical fiction, a love story, a science fiction thriller, a fantasy novel, and a psychological drama all at once. It traverses worlds of opulence and worlds of poverty with equal acuity and grace.
BULLWINKEL: Oh, man, I couldn’t agree more. I feel that so strongly with this book, that the act of reading necessitates bringing your own lived experience to the text in order to bring the character off the page and into your mind. BULLWINKEL: Yeah. The scene where Nick is basically forced to do 23andMe was stressful. He gets peer pressured into doing genetic tests, and something was so violating about that.
BULLWINKEL: Right. In a different direction, one of the real treats for me as a reader was that, sprinkled throughout the entire book, there were these incredible descriptions of food. I’m thinking specifically of the first meal that Matthew and Lily share and those Bacchanal feasts in the Hamptons. I really feel that you write about food like Ottessa Moshfegh writes about fashion, where it’s part of the scene, but it’s so vibrant and vivid and felt.
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