My Dear You

Rachel Khong is one of our best observers of the human condition, and isn't afraid to take us to unreal realms in order to illuminate the very real strangeness about being alive right now, in this specific moment. In these stories, ghosts haunt toilet tanks, girls turn into animals, the dead get to choose new bodies for the afterlife, and sex dolls become friends. These fearlessly funny and smart stories are a joy.

MY DEAR YOU is a garden of bravura, incandescent and explosive and compassionate all at once. Khong's stories astound and comfort, expanding the form's possibilities, guiding us through the familiar, and the deeply unknowable, in spectacular form. Khong is one of my favorite writers; MY DEAR YOU is one of my favorite books.

There’s a beautiful effortless feel to these stories that makes them so highly readable (and I’m sure wasn’t effortless at all), and with it, Khong is able to sneak in abundant insights and a genuine depth that reveals itself unexpectedly. A thoroughly enjoyable collection.

I couldn't stop reading these sly, poignant, very funny stories about intimacy and friendship, work and death, longing and connection. Rachel Khong's writing is so agile and fluid and charming that it can sneak up on you and knock you out.

MY DEAR YOU is a collection of wise stories whose wisdom sneaks up on you, delivered as it is in the guise of a joke. If this collection is a book of jokes, the jokes are the hysterical kind. You start out laughing, then realize you’re crying, without quite understanding what’s happened. Rachel Khong: comic, sage. I loved these bonkers stories so much.

From the author of the New York Times bestselling REAL AMERICANS comes a playful, richly inquisitive collection exploring the connections and disruptions which define us. 
 
Throughout MY DEAR YOU, normal people go through extraordinary transformations. A government injects its people with a drug that makes them see everyone else as members of their own race and gender. A factory worker develops an unlikely friendship with the artificially intelligent sex doll she is tasked with training. God decides that humanity is a lost cause and gives each person 24 hours to decide in which animal form they will spend the rest of their days. 
 
Along the way, characters are confronted with supernatural and otherworldly interventions, as well as the earthly, human concerns that shape our daily lives: capitalism and race, intimacy, memory, and mortality. 
 
Playful and tender, dark and witty, each of these stories is infused with a profound sense of compassion. They express a powerful curiosity about the human experience, and the inescapable choices that meet us all: to have or not have children; to pursue connections with others in spite of life’s impermanence; how to live – and live well.

Rachel Khong is the author of Goodbye, Vitamin, win­ner of the California Book Award for First Fiction. Real Americans, her second novel, was a New York Times best­seller. In 2018, Khong founded The Ruby, a work and event space for women and nonbinary writers and artists in San Francisco’s Mission District. With friends, she teaches creative writing as The Dream Side. She lives in Los Angeles.

From the author of the New York Times bestselling REAL AMERICANS comes a playful, richly inquisitive collection exploring the connections and disruptions which define us. 
 
Throughout MY DEAR YOU, normal people go through extraordinary transformations. A government injects its people with a drug that makes them see everyone else as members of their own race and gender. A factory worker develops an unlikely friendship with the artificially intelligent sex doll she is tasked with training. God decides that humanity is a lost cause and gives each person 24 hours to decide in which animal form they will spend the rest of their days. 
 
Along the way, characters are confronted with supernatural and otherworldly interventions, as well as the earthly, human concerns that shape our daily lives: capitalism and race, intimacy, memory, and mortality. 
 
Playful and tender, dark and witty, each of these stories is infused with a profound sense of compassion. They express a powerful curiosity about the human experience, and the inescapable choices that meet us all: to have or not have children; to pursue connections with others in spite of life’s impermanence; how to live – and live well.

Rachel Khong

Real Americans traverses time with verve and feeling. Khong captures how people can be strange to themselves, how bewilderment can be a site of creation (or change, or becoming)

Aglow with love in its many forms, suffused with questions of where-and to whom-we belong, Real Americans is a book of rare charm. Khong untangles the roots of family with a wry, tender attention that will leave readers as comforted as they are challenged

Gorgeous, heartfelt, soaring, philosophical and deft, Real Americans turns the multigenerational novel inside out. Fate, honesty, our bargains with life. You will keep turning it over and over in your mind

Real Americans is a truly special novel. It&rsquo;s an elegant portrait of how we disappoint those we love, despite trying our best, and how attempts to tame humanity misunderstand its complexity. Khong masterfully unfolds each character before us, revealing their dreams and regrets, and their undying hope for better.

Real Americans is a grand novel that explores the American psyche, dramatizing the fundamental American belief in the ability to change the world and improve humanity. Rachel Khong shows infinite and colorful perceptions of the world, which are often leavened with wisdom. Besides being a page turner, this book is also an eye-opener, imaginative and exhilarating

Khong is a magician . . . Brilliant

Khong masterfully explores a family splintered by science, struggling to redefine their own lives after uncovering harrowing secrets. Real Americans is a mesmerizing multigenerational novel about privilege, identity and the illusions of the American dream

Khong manages to imbue seemingly mundane topics with charm and pathos through her attentive, humorous and personable writing

Like a chain of fairy lights in the darkness

A million small, human and often deeply funny details gather force to tell a tale that is ultimately, incredibly poignant

Miranda July, author of The First Bad Man, on Rachel Khong

Rachel Khong&rsquo;s gripping second novel explores how biology, our parents&rsquo; abstract hopes for us, sheer luck, and the forces of history itself make us who we are. Real Americans is both a tender story of the intimate relationships between people and a sharp examination of very big questions of ethics, politics, and fate

Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind

A tale of identity, belonging and betrayal

Beautifully written . . . a confident, immersive story that explores three very different-but-interconnected lives . . . binding the story together is a clear-eyed look at money and power, lost connections and what we inherit from our families - with an unexpected sprinkling of sci-fi and magic too

Easy to inhale . . . Khong observes this pervasive sense of unbelonging with cutting precision, and perfectly captures the dislocation, insecurity and erasure that are facets of Asian-American life . . . The novel&rsquo;s real beauty lies in its amazement at the sheer luck of being alive.

A poignant and contemporary multi-generational novel . . . Khong's candid and humorous storytelling shines as she explores the challenges and complexities of straddling multiple cultural worlds . . . An expansive story of secrets, betrayal, and forgiveness. Khong's narrative resonates deeply, offering readers an insightful and heartfelt exploration of race, family, and the pursuit of the American Dream.

[An] ambitious multigenerational saga of money , migration, dreams, secrets and the lure of scientific progress

Evocative and gripping . . . a beautifully told multigenerational story about the Chen family, and what identity really means

This compelling family saga tackles big issues with insight and a light touch

A multigenerational family epic, one that asks big questions about whether we make our own decisions, but does so with a wonderfully light touch

** THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ** 
 
'Insightful and heartfelt' GLAMOUR 
 
'Easy to inhale' GUARDIAN 
 
'Mesmerizing' BRIT BENNETT, author of THE VANISHING HALF 
 
*** 
 
New York City, 1999. Lily Chen is an unpaid intern, pursuing the American Dream, when she falls for a young financier – and the life of luxury his vast fortune promises. Everything she wants seems to finally be within reach. But deep down, she knows that her ambitious scientist mother, Mei, imagined so much more for her when she fled the unspoken horrors of Mao’s cultural revolution. 
 
Twenty years later, Lily is a single parent, estranged from her own family and increasingly isolated from her teenage son, Nick. Desperate to break free from their life on a remote island in Washington State, Nick strives to live better than the generation before him, unable to understand his mother’s choices. But when he looks into the past and is unexpectedly confronted by the ghosts of his grandmother’s young life in 1960s China, he risks unsettling a legacy of family secrets – passed on from mother, to daughter, to son. 
 
Following three generations of one Chinese American family, REAL AMERICANS is a mesmerising, multilayered family drama which explores the choices we make for ourselves, and for our children. Spanning decades and continents, it is a soaring, heartfelt story about fate, fortune, and what it means to belong. 
 
*** 
 
'Traverses time with verve and feeling' RAVEN LEILANI, author of LUSTER 
 
'An eye-opener, imaginative and exhilarating' HA JIN, author of WAITING 
 
'Gorgeous, heartfelt, soaring, philosophical and deft' ANDREW SEAN GREER, author of LESS

Rachel Khong

Praise for Real Americans

Real Americans traverses time with verve and feeling. Khong captures how people can be strange to themselves, how bewilderment can be a site of creation (or change, or becoming)

Aglow with love in its many forms, suffused with questions of where-and to whom-we belong, Real Americans is a book of rare charm. Khong untangles the roots of family with a wry, tender attention that ...

**Gorgeous, heartfelt, soaring, philosophical and deft, Real Americans turns the multigenerational novel inside out.** Fate, honesty, our bargains with life. You will keep turning it over and over in your ...

Real Americans traverses time with verve and feeling. Khong captures how people can be strange to themselves, how bewilderment can be a site of creation (or change, or becoming)

Aglow with love in its many forms, suffused with questions of where-and to whom-we belong, Real Americans is a book of rare charm. Khong untangles the roots of family with a wry, tender attention that ...

**Gorgeous, heartfelt, soaring, philosophical and deft, Real Americans turns the multigenerational novel inside out.** Fate, honesty, our bargains with life. You will keep turning it over and over in your ...

Real Americans traverses time with verve and feeling. Khong captures how people can be strange to themselves, how bewilderment can be a site of creation (or change, or becoming)

Aglow with love in its many forms, suffused with questions of where-and to whom-we belong, Real Americans is a book of rare charm. Khong untangles the roots of family with a wry, tender attention that ...

**Gorgeous, heartfelt, soaring, philosophical and deft, Real Americans turns the multigenerational novel inside out.** Fate, honesty, our bargains with life. You will keep turning it over and over in your ...

Books by Rachel Khong

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Praise for Real Americans

Real Americans traverses time with verve and feeling. Khong captures how people can be strange to themselves, how bewilderment can be a site of creation (or change, or becoming)

Aglow with love in its many forms, suffused with questions of where-and to whom-we belong, Real Americans is a book of rare charm. Khong untangles the roots of family with a wry, tender attention that ...

Gorgeous, heartfelt, soaring, philosophical and deft, Real Americans turns the multigenerational novel inside out. Fate, honesty, our bargains with life. You will keep turning it over and over in your ...

Real Americans traverses time with verve and feeling. Khong captures how people can be strange to themselves, how bewilderment can be a site of creation (or change, or becoming)

Aglow with love in its many forms, suffused with questions of where-and to whom-we belong, Real Americans is a book of rare charm. Khong untangles the roots of family with a wry, tender attention that ...

Gorgeous, heartfelt, soaring, philosophical and deft, Real Americans turns the multigenerational novel inside out. Fate, honesty, our bargains with life. You will keep turning it over and over in your ...

Real Americans traverses time with verve and feeling. Khong captures how people can be strange to themselves, how bewilderment can be a site of creation (or change, or becoming)

Aglow with love in its many forms, suffused with questions of where-and to whom-we belong, Real Americans is a book of rare charm. Khong untangles the roots of family with a wry, tender attention that ...

Gorgeous, heartfelt, soaring, philosophical and deft, Real Americans turns the multigenerational novel inside out. Fate, honesty, our bargains with life. You will keep turning it over and over in your ...

Books by Rachel Khong

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter

**Gorgeous, heartfelt, soaring, philosophical and deft, Real Americans turns the multigenerational novel inside out.** Fate, honesty, our bargains with life. You will keep turning it over and over in your ...

**Gorgeous, heartfelt, soaring, philosophical and deft, Real Americans turns the multigenerational novel inside out.** Fate, honesty, our bargains with life. You will keep turning it over and over in your ...

**Gorgeous, heartfelt, soaring, philosophical and deft, Real Americans turns the multigenerational novel inside out.** Fate, honesty, our bargains with life. You will keep turning it over and over in your ...