All You Can Ever Know
Ratings14
Average rating4.1
15
Ratings14
Average rating4.1
Chung investigates the mysteries and complexities of her transracial adoption in this chronicle of unexpected family for anyone who has struggled to figure out where they belong.
Nicole Chung was born severely premature, placed for adoption by her Korean parents, and raised by a white family in a sheltered Oregon town. She was told her biological parents had made the ultimate sacrifice in the hope of giving her a better life, that forever feeling slightly out of place was her fate as a transracial adoptee. But Nicole grew up facing prejudice her adoptive family couldn't see, and wondered if the story she'd been told was the whole truth. Here Chung tells of her search for the people who gave her up, and chronicles the repercussions of unearthing painful family secrets. -- adapted from jacket
Reviews with the most likes.
2020 – 5 stars. I wasn't ready for this book in 2018.
2018 – 4.5 stars. My feelings about this book, as a fellow Korean adopted, are very complicated, but I'm so glad to have read it. Thanks to Nicole Chung for sharing her life with us readers.
I loved this and I wish it had been even longer - I tried to read it more slowly but before I knew it I had finished. I'm neither an adoptee nor an adoptive parent, but I am a parent (which is still weird to say!) and the theme of parenthood forcing you to reflect on who you are and what you want your children to inherit from you really resonated with me, especially as we're raising a boy in this incredibly toxic culture. Nicole writes so beautifully and with such clarity that I really felt that I was with her on every step of her journey to discover her birth family. I can't wait to read the next thing she writes, whether memoir, fiction, or anything else!
This is a beautifully complex memoir. There are big questions with no easy answers, but moving prose along the way.
This book doesn't feel like it has much content - it could be an essay or a novella length piece. The part at the end about the authors relationship with her sister is the only real interesting part. Her experiences with pregnancy and childbirth and parenting weren't what I signed up for here.
