A Conversation with Rachel Khong
“Writing fiction is an amazing opportunity to try on different lives.”
Real Americans has an ambitious plot and I’d love to know, especially as the scale differs from your first publication, how you approached the scale? How did the writing experience differ? And has your writing process changed over the years?
After writing Goodbye, Vitamin, a slim book that can be read in a day, I knew I wanted to challenge myself to write a longer work. The experience of writing Real Americans was certainly different because I was in a different phase of my life. I began writing my first novel in graduate school and finished it while working full-time at a food magazine. Writing Goodbye, Vitamin was much more sporadic: I would neglect the novel for weeks or months on end; I would write it during nights, weekends, and vacations. That fragmented approach is reflected in the final text, which is itself fragmented. But with Real Americans, which is a longer, more traditional narrative, I found that I needed to stay present with the characters, and immersed in their stories day after day. I wrote most mornings and carried the book in my mind over years. The book really lived alongside me. These days, I have much more stability and flexibility in my life than I used to, which is a great luxury, especially when it comes to writing.
What was the initial inspiration for Real Americans? Did it begin with a character, theme, scene, or something else?
I began writing Real Americans in December 2016, in the wake of the American election. Like so many Americans at the time, I felt helpless in the face of this powerful system; I was wondering what agency we had in our lives, and what responsibility we bore to other people. Fascism and fascist ideas are growing more common globally, not just in the U.S., and I was interested in writing about the human discomfort with difference of all kinds. I worry that our globalized world is moving toward homogeneity, toward consolidation of power, rather than curiosity about differences, and compassion. I’m realizing this book is also about the limited nature of our lives. I wrote this book throughout my thirties—from early to late thirties. Growing older, one finds that life moves forward and never back, that doors have closed behind you. There’s a sadness there, but also meaning in the finitude.
How do you tend to approach characterisation? You build such beautifully rounded characters, and the way they react to other people and scenarios feels so real. I assume that some readers may assume you emphasised or related the most to Lily, but how did you find the experience of writing Nick and Mei?
Thank you for saying this! I strive to make the characters feel as real as you or me. Lily may appear to be the closest to who I am, demographically, but emotionally and personality-wise I have much more in common with Nick and Mei. Each character is infused with some of my perspectives and given some of my observations, but they each have experiences unique to themselves. Earlier, I mentioned the limited nature of human life. Writing fiction is an amazing opportunity to try on different lives. And so I loved imagining what it might be like to be a teenager living today or to be a young woman who lived in China in the 1960s. Those realities could not be farther than my own, and yet we have all experienced heartbreak, sadness, anger, betrayal. Getting to know these characters was a long process that required patience. It was almost like getting to know real people. They surprised me and contradicted themselves.
For me, Real Americans was one of those books that totally sucked me into a different world for a few days - I felt totally immersed! Is that the kind of book you enjoy reading yourself in your own time?
Again, thank you for saying this! I love all sorts of books, which include books that are challenging and need to be considered and savoured slowly. But writing Real Americans, I knew that I wanted to attempt a book that didn’t feel laborious to read—a book that flew by and made you forget about your own life for a while. I’m thrilled that it was that way for you. The hope was that the reader might then emerge from the reading experience as though they’d just taken a trip, feeling a little bit stunned, a little bit changed. That’s what first drew me to reading as a child: this sense of transcending my circumscribed life via books. As a child, I didn’t have much agency, but through books, I could go on adventures, and imagine myself in other worlds and in other lives.
Where do you think the value is in multigenerational stories? In your eyes, what sets them apart from other novels?
A novel with a single narrator is so much about consciousness and inhabiting one person’s perspective. I cherish novels like that, novels that make you feel as though you are someone else: alongside them in their lives and decision making. Multigenerational stories enlarge that a little bit, and poke at the limitations of that single perspective. They suggest that things may not exactly be as they appear. They can be a reminder that our own perspectives are limited, and don’t include the full story.
In terms of themes, Real Americans covers many different topics, and a couple of the ones that really stood out to me are the idea of fortune and destiny. Would you be able to tell us a little bit more about why you were drawn to those topics?
My family moved to the U.S. from Malaysia when I was two years old. It’s a particularly American narrative that the past does not matter: that the future can be anything you wish and that you, as an individual, can be anything you put your mind to, regardless of your background or upbringing. It’s tempting to ignore the past, and yet ignoring the past isn’t a solution to real problems. The past affects the present, and ignoring that does not make it any less true. And yet I don’t think we are doomed by our pasts, either. I’m still considering these questions: What do we inherit? What shapes us? What will we make of ourselves?
Many questions and considerations, such as, ‘how far would you go to shape your own destiny?’ are posed throughout Real Americans through the plot and characters, but I was curious to know whether writing the book gave you any clarity on larger themes, or did you find yourself questioning ideas more and more.
Many of the questions the book poses cannot really be answered, or perhaps have answers that have to be unique to every person. I don’t believe there is a blanket philosophy that can apply to every human being, and that’s why so many belief systems exist to accommodate the diversity of human belief. But writing this book helped me consider how I’d like to live my own life. I don’t want to think of time as a commodity to be used; I want to be more present with my loved ones. I don’t want to view homogeneity and perfection as ideals. As individuals, we might not be able to stop wars or prevent injustices, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. I think trying is a worthwhile effort. What I take from the book, in the end, is that even though there are no clear-cut answers (for example, to the question of are we destined or made?), it is worthwhile to ask the questions; it is worthwhile to take actions. I think it can be true that human life is so minor and insignificant—our time here is really just a blip—and it can also be true that being alive is astonishing and worthwhile.
Do you have any reading habits, and do they change at all when you’re in the middle of writing a novel?
I like to alternate between fiction and nonfiction. I’ll read a novel and chase it with a book of nonfiction to give that novel some room to breathe in my mind. I’m also always reading short stories and poems alongside: I strive for one story and one poem a day.
Do you judge a book by its cover?
Honestly, I do. But I also love to be proven wrong about my judgment.
