New York, New Year\u2019s Eve 1999: Amid the euphoria of the new millennium and an unpaid internship at a trendy media startup, two people who couldn\u2019t be more different meet. Lily, the daughter of poor Chinese immigrants (and an intern), and Matthew, the heir to a pharmaceutical empire. It\u2019s the stuff the American Dream is made of\u2014yet two decades later, Lily\u2019s son Nick is searching for the missing pieces of his identity on a remote island. What really makes us who we are? Is it blood or genes, the money we inherit or earn\u2014or the stories we tell ourselves about who we are? US bestselling author Rachel Khong presents the literary centerpiece of our summer program with her sensational book \u201cReal Americans\u201d in conversation with Ren\u00e9 Freudenthal from the Carl-Schurz-Haus. In her acclaimed novel, she dissects the hairline cracks in the fa\u00e7ade of privileged US society and poses the universal question of true belonging in a changing world. We\u2019ll discuss repressed family secrets, the limits of heritage in America\u2019s \u201cmelting pot,\u201d and the deep longing for identity beyond all clich\u00e9s with one of the most exciting voices in contemporary US literature. Khong is the recipient of the California Book Award, among other honors. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Reading & Conversation with Rachel Khong, Los Angeles<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4133,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","tags":[],"mec_category":[44,49],"class_list":["post-4136","mec-events","type-mec-events","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","mec_category-in-english-en","mec_category-literature-film"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.csh-fr.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/mec-events\/4136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.csh-fr.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/mec-events"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.csh-fr.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/mec-events"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.csh-fr.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.csh-fr.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4136"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.csh-fr.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.csh-fr.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.csh-fr.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4136"},{"taxonomy":"mec_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.csh-fr.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/mec_category?post=4136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}