Real Americans

Matthew is Lily’s love interest and the father of her son, Nico/Nick. He is characterized initially through the framework of affluence, and his character is one of the novel’s key interrogations of Class and Belonging. Matthew is heir to a sizeable medical research corporation and philanthropic foundation, and after learning more about his family background, Lily observes that he is “that kind of rich” (73). He whisks Lily away to Paris on their first date and is happy to provide her with a substantial allowance when she moves in with him. At the same time, Matthew is distinctly uncomfortable with his privilege and even goes so far as to refrain from using his father’s name professionally to avoid what he sees as the stigma of generational wealth. However, he is at times drawn to the world of money and privilege and wields its power when it suits him (although often for good). Matthew’s uncomfortable relationship with affluence is yet another of the novel’s indictments of class privilege, and he is a character who wants to be recognized for more than the wealth he was born into.

Matthew is additionally characterized, like many others in this novel, through his fractured family relationships. He lost both his mother and brother to suicide, and with the exception of his sister, Jenna, he struggles within his nuclear family. Matthew and his father clash over his life choices and Matthew’s opinion of his father’s research, and Matthew ultimately comes to judge his father for what he perceives as a lack of ethics in his use of experimental gene-editing treatments. Matthew struggles in his paternal relationships with Sam and Nick, but his reconciliation with Nick and his decision to prevent unethical research at Nick’s startup gestures toward this novel’s hopeful stance on Fraught Family Relationships. Through relationships like Nick and Matthew’s, Khong suggests that it is possible to repair damaged connections.

Matthew is also characterized by his kindness. He is caring toward Lily during their relationship, and even when she feels the sting of their class difference, he tries to communicate to her that her background does not matter to him. Although gifts like the designer dress Matthew gives Lily ultimately highlight their differences, he gives her the dress so that she will feel more comfortable around his friends and family. He is also kind to Nick and helps him even when Nick pushes him away. He loves his son, and that love is apparent, even though their family situation is complex and difficult at times.

Nick is Lily’s son and one of the novel’s three narrators. He is characterized initially by his outsider status and the unhappiness he feels as a result of his social alienation. Unlike his friend Timothy, he craves acceptance from his peers, and while his friend avoids social interactions, Nick reflects, “I wished we were like everyone else: that we had girlfriends and after school activities and that we played pickup basketball with the other guys our age” (140). Although Nick, Lily, and May all feel like misfits for different reasons, they are connected by their shared feelings of social isolation. Like intelligence, outsider status is a family trait. Nick continues to struggle socially in college, although he does eventually find a foothold. Even at the biotech startup where he works as an adult, Nick is shown to hover around the margins of the cohesive, central group, and his views on race and identity further mark him as a misfit.

Because of Otto and May’s gene-editing experiments, Nick presents as white rather than biracial. This, too, marks him as different in his own mind, and he struggles to feel connected to his Chinese heritage. It is partially because of his own experience as a white-presenting Asian American that he objects to his startup’s plan to gene edit for skin color, and Nick’s character is one of the author’s key modes of engagement with the complex politics of skin color in the United States.

Nick is also characterized by his close but fraught relationships. He and his mother are tightly bonded, but he experiences her parenting as a kind of confinement during his youth because of her anti-materialist and anti-establishment practices. She does not use the internet, nor does she allow Nick to have a computer or phone. He also objects to Lily keeping his father’s identity from him, and the two have to overcome her years of secrecy and dishonesty before they can reconcile and reconnect. Nick’s relationship with his father is similarly fraught. He is curious about Matthew and does desire to know his father, but at various points in the narrative, he breaks off communication with him. He is never sure how he feels about his father, and it is not until the end of the novel that true reconciliation seems possible. 

May is Lily’s mother and one of the novel’s three narrators. Born in a rural Chinese village, she longs to pursue an education in Beijing from a very young age. She is characterized initially through the lens of her intellect and desire to attend university, and because both her daughter and grandson are intelligent (and additionally because Nick shares her interest in science), it becomes clear that intelligence is an inherited trait within the Chen family. May’s experiences as a young girl during Mao’s Great Leap Forward and her persecution at the hands of China’s Red Guards ground the novel within the history of 20th-century China and further its engagement with the second large wave of emigration from communist China. May remembers, “It seemed impossible that the revolution could come to us” (307), and her experiences during the Cultural Revolution speak to real-life Chinese citizens who fled to the United States to escape persecution, imprisonment, and death.

May and Charles are an accurate reflection of many of the second wave’s immigrants: intellectuals, academics, and scientists who left China in droves during the Cultural Revolution. May (and Charles) are additionally characterized by their desire to be American. Charles is drawn to American food and culture, but May feels a deep connection to American notions of a “work ethic” and the way that hard work opens up new possibilities for workers. Although May does not initially want to become a mother, she vows to instill these values in her daughter and raises Lily in a home characterized by American rather than Chinese beliefs and practices. Lily recalls that her “mother and father had spoken English in the house, never Chinese” (43), and Lily does not hear her mother speak Chinese or cook Chinese food until she herself is an adult. May is so devoted to her work in genetics research that she gives experimental treatments to her daughter. She later comes to regret her decision, and as an elderly woman, she is characterized more by her desire to repair her connection to her daughter and grandson than she was in her earlier years.

Theresa and Hong are friends of Lily’s. She meets them at a fitness class, and although she is initially intimidated by them, they quickly accept Lily into their social circle. Theresa is Korean, and Hong is Vietnamese, and they both grew up in more traditionally Asian families than Lily. They are more connected to their families’ cultures, and Lily is initially awestruck to hear Hong order food in rapid-fire Vietnamese at a restaurant. Theresa’s and Hong’s cultural identities strike Lily as more complex than hers because, much more than Lily, these two women represent a hybrid of American and Asian cultures. She simultaneously envies Theresa and Hong for their cultural knowledge and grapples with big-picture notions of what it means to be an Asian American. She is never entirely comfortable with her own racial identity and cannot quite decide if she would rather be “more” or “less” Asian.

Theresa and Hong are also, like Lily, in long-term romantic relationships with white men. Lily observes this phenomenon and wonders if it is a sign of underlying racial tension in the United States. Although Theresa and Hong seem much more comfortable with their Asian heritage and looks, Lily wonders if some small piece of them seeks greater acceptance within American society through a relationship with someone whose racial heritage reflects the nation’s majority.