Why Rachel Khong says novel ‘Real Americans’ explores issues society still faces – Orange County Register

At the end of 2016, Rachel Khong began writing a short story.

She quickly realized that it would turn into something longer. What began as a love story eventually evolved into a multi-generational saga blending wealth, power and family secrets with cutting-edge medical technology.

“Real Americans” has just been released in bookstores.

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“Because of the times we lived in, the times we still live in, I thought a lot about these themes that ended up in the book itself, things like power, identity, privilege and immigration,” he explains. Khong by phone from his home in Los Angeles.

Khong, the award-winning author of “Goodbye, Vitamin,” had read about gene editing and genetics. At first, however, she thought her second novel would be about the eugenics movement of the early 20th century.

“It was something that was commonly accepted as good for society and good for human beings to produce better human beings,” she says of the now-discredited pseudoscience known as eugenics. “It was legitimized by science and all these rich families donated to this research. They funded this research. People love the Carnegies. There was a huge eugenics laboratory on Long Island, at Cold Spring Harbor.

Instead, “Real Americans” begins just before the turn of the millennium and takes readers into the not-so-distant future, returning to the mid-to-late 20th century. It’s a contemporary story rooted in real scientific breakthroughs that will sound eerily familiar to anyone who’s heard of companies like fertility startup Orchid, which can scan embryos for possible genetic diseases.

“Real Americans” also reflects issues surrounding other 21st-century advances; readers might recognize parallels with their own concerns about social media, AI, and other technologies as they read it.

“The theme of action is so important in this book,” Khong says. “What do powerful people and systems choose for our lives, our individual lives as members of a society? It also depends on what parents choose for their children.

One of the book’s major questions, according to Khong, is: “To what extent should we decide for others?” » In “Real Americans,” it is the parents who largely make the decisions that change the lives of their children and the impact of these decisions on two families now linked by a twist of fate.

“I think parents always, hopefully, do the best they can for their children. They make decisions based on what they think is the right decision, but it’s sort of impossible to know what the right decision is because everyone has a limited perspective,” says Khong. “You don’t have all the information about who that child is going to be or what they actually need.”

A contemporary parallel might be former child influencers who are now young adults and who have shed light on the downsides of growing up in front of a global online audience. “I think that’s probably part of the reason I thought about it in this book,” Khong says. “I think parents obviously have a lot of power and control over their children’s lives.”

Another parallel, which many might find relevant, is the control that technology companies have over much of our society. “I think a lot about how decisions were made for us, especially around technology, that we didn’t really agree to, a big version of kids not saying OK to their parents to put them on online,” says Khong. “We didn’t really accept the fact that we were voluntarily producing content for these social networks.”

She continues: “Really, so many people are addicted now. It’s not something we all discussed and decided was the way we wanted to change as human beings.

However, the term “real Americans” is not so much about the technology we use to communicate as it is about advances in gene editing that could lead humanity down an equally murky ethical path.

“It’s already very advanced and we will be able to choose a lot of things for our future children. I think it’s important to have these conversations,” Khong says. “What are we going to value in being a human being? It cannot simply be a homogeneous ideal that we have in mind.

That’s the dilemma. Should the same technology that can be used to detect deadly diseases also be used to decide one’s physical appearance, abilities and, eventually, one’s future?

“I think diversity is very important and we talk about it a lot in this country, but it doesn’t translate into practice,” says Khong. “In practice, people will always change their appearance. I think that’s something that’s problematic.

Khong says: “There are all these ways that humans are different and that’s okay and I think that should be celebrated. »