NICOLE CHUNG

“Chung’s search for her biological roots . . . has to be one of this year’s finest books, let alone memoirs.” —The Washington Post

“Deeply thoughtful and moving . . . a fiercely compelling page-turner.” —The Boston Globe

National Bestseller
Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award
Semifinalist, PEN Open Book Award
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, NPR, The Boston Globe, TIME, Newsday, Library Journal, BuzzFeed, Chicago Review of Books, Real Simple, Paste Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Chicago Public Library, Seattle Public Library, Goodreads, Reading Women, Shelf Awareness, Thrillist, Jezebel, Bon Appétit, Electric Literature, Entropy, & more
A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection
An Official Junior Library Guild Selection
An ABA Indies Introduce Pick
An Indie Next Pick
An Indies Choice Honor Book
A One Book, One Tulsa Selection

What does it mean to lose your roots—within your culture, within your family—and what happens when you find them?

Nicole Chung was born severely premature, placed for adoption by her Korean immigrant parents, and raised by a white family in a sheltered Oregon town. From early childhood, she heard the story of her adoption as a comforting, prepackaged myth. She believed that her biological parents had made the ultimate sacrifice in the hopes of giving her a better life; that forever feeling slightly out of place was simply her fate as a transracial adoptee. But as she grew up—facing prejudice her adoptive family couldn’t see, finding her identity as an Asian American and a writer, becoming ever more curious about where she came from—she wondered if the story she’d been told was the whole truth.

With warmth, candor, and startling insight, Chung tells of her search for the people who gave her up, which coincided with the birth of her own child. All You Can Ever Know is a profound, moving chronicle of surprising connections and the repercussions of unearthing painful family secrets—vital reading for anyone who has ever struggled to figure out where they belong.

“Chung’s memoir is more than a thoughtful consideration of race and heritage in America. It is the story of sisters finding each other, overcoming bureaucracy, abuse, separation, and time.” —The New Yorker

PRESS

“[A] stunning memoir . . . Chung’s writing is vibrant and provocative as she explores her complicated feelings about her transracial adoption . . . and the importance of knowing where one comes from.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Chung’s search for her biological roots . . . has to be one of this year’s finest books, let alone memoirs . . . Chung has literary chops to spare and they’re on full display in descriptions of her need, pain and bravery.” —Bethanne Patrick, The Washington Post

“Nicole Chung delved into her own cross-cultural adoption to unpack our collective strengths and weaknesses when it comes to responding to our differences . . . Opening readers’ eyes to the complexities of cross-cultural adoption, Chung makes a resounding case for empathy.” —TIME Magazine

“All You Can Ever Know is partially about Chung’s search as an adult for her birth family, and who she found. But it’s also a thoughtful look at transracial adoption and a meditation on identity and culture . . . Her memoir is a sometimes heartbreaking, always unflinching look at what it means to feel rootless.” —NPR

“The honesty with which Chung grapples with this kind of racial erasure is a hallmark of her stunning debut memoir, a book that confronts enormous pain with precision, clarity, and grace . . . [I]n addition to being deeply thoughtful and moving, the book is a fiercely compelling page-turner . . . But what shines through this beautiful book is her clear-eyed compassion for all her relations, her powerful desire for connection, her bold pursuit of her own identity, and the sheer creative energy it took to build her own family tree, to ‘discover and tell another kind of story.'” —Kate Tuttle, The Boston Globe

“The author . . . writes crisply, intimately, bringing us close to her experiences of pain, isolation, and discovery . . . Passages like this give All You Can Ever Know real texture, the sensations practically flowing from the page. And Chung emotionally relays her journey to becoming a writer — her path of negotiating and asserting her identity — and to learning about her birth family’s rather traumatic past. Yet her empathetic, graceful prose shines brightest when she casts her gaze elsewhere: on her adoptive parents — their warmth and their secrets, their struggle to talk about race — or on her birth sister, Cindy, who opens Chung’s eyes in adulthood, while similarly trying to find herself. Through them, Chung reveals a family story of heartbreaking truth — personal in its detail, universal in its complexity.” —Entertainment Weekly

“[T]he gripping story of [Chung’s] journey to connect with her birth parents and, later, the sisters she never knew she had . . . This touching memoir explores issues of identity, racism, motherhood, and sisterhood with eloquence and grace. Highly recommended.” —Library Journal (starred review)

“[A] deeply moving and profound account of [Chung’s] life as a Korean American adoptee, as she grows up and strives to understand her identity . . . All You Can Ever Know honors the grand complexity of love, family, and identity, while showing us how these things can save us and break us with devastating clarity and beauty.” —Isaac Fitzgerald, TODAY Show

“Beyond its critical and popular success, All You Can Ever Know is a landmark in the literature of adoption, and will be of enduring value to people looking for advice about raising a child of a different race. In fact, it opens with a story about one such couple who came to Nicole with their questions back when she was just out of college, years before she began her search for her family. Did she ever feel like her adoptive parents weren’t her real parents? they asked. Had she had any issues growing up? . . . The whole answer, in all its unsentimental, unshrinking complexity, is found in this courageous book.” —Marion Winik, National Book Critics Circle

“The memoir All You Can Ever Know is written with all the style and narrative of great fiction, so it’s no surprise that acclaimed novelists Celeste Ng and Alexander Chee have sung its praises. The debut . . . traces the author’s life from being put up for adoption by her Korean parents when she was born prematurely in a Seattle hospital, to being raised by a white family in a sheltered Oregon town. Chung describes a childhood of constantly being the only nonwhite child in the room, of never seeing people who looked like her, and of facing prejudice because of it. As these and other layers of the seemingly uncomplicated adoption come to light, Chung highlights the difficulties not only of her unique situation, but of adoptees in general.” —Vanity Fair

“In her memoir, All You Can Ever Know, Chung writes with an empathy that is careful to consider the perspectives of everyone involved in her adoption story: herself, her adoptive parents and her birth family . . . Though Chung has been complicating most traditional, prepackaged adoption narratives throughout the book, it’s when she is faced with the differences in her own story that the lesson reveals itself to the reader — who begins to see just how varied adoption stories can be . . . Though the story is intensely personal, it’s never myopic and, ultimately, it’s universal: a story about learning to grapple with our own identities, about learning where we belong, and about families.” —Mariya Karimjee, NPR Books

“[A] tender, unsentimental memoir . . . All You Can Ever Know has the patient pacing of a mystery and the philosophical heft of a skeptic’s undertaking. Along the way, Chung wrestles with biology and culture, heritage and belonging, race and motherhood — always from an intensely personal vantage. That the apex of her search coincides with Chung’s first pregnancy provides even more material for the memoir’s tango of abandonment and embrace.” —Lisa Kennedy, Newsday

“Highly compelling for its depiction of a woman’s struggle to make peace with herself and her identity, the book offers a poignant depiction of the irreducibly complex nature of human motives and family ties. A profound, searching memoir about ‘finding the courage to question what I’d always been told.’” —Kirkus

“What gives All You Can Ever Know its power is the emotional honesty in every line, essential to the telling of a story so personal . . . All You Can Ever Know, sometimes painfully and always beautifully, explores what it means to be adopted, to be a different race from the family you grew up in, and to later create a family of your own. Chung…tells her story with compassion and open-eyed kindness.” —The Seattle Times

“[Chung] explores her experience . . . with an open heart and clear-eyed grace . . . Her quest is gripping . . . All You Can Ever Know is a book about true love—and therefore laced with pain as well as joy.” —The Dallas Morning News

“A powerful saga about identity with revelations to keep you captivated from cover to cover.” —Paste Magazine

“With clarity, grace, and no small amount of courage, Chung has written a powerful memoir about her experience as an adoptee, an Asian-American, a daughter, a sister, and a mother. All You Can Ever Know is a candid and beautiful exploration of themes of identity, family, racism, and love. And while the answers Chung finds in her search for the birth family she never knew are fascinating, the power of this book lies in Chung’s willingness to ‘question the things [she’d] always been told,’ even while knowing that she might find unsettling truths and an origin story unlike what she’d always thought had existed. Though this book is specific to Chung’s experience and an important example of the complexities inherent to transracial adoption, its words will resonate deep within the core of anyone who has ever questioned their place in their family, their community, and the world.” —NYLON

“Following a season of (wonderful) books about motherhood, Nicole Chung’s memoir stands out for its broadening of the discussion, exploring the complicated consequences of interracial adoption . . . All You Can Ever Know is the messy navigation of Chung’s new reality — her working out the boundaries of these people who are both kin and strangers . . . and her exploration of the profound, ever-shifting meaning of family.” —BuzzFeed

“In this much-anticipated memoir, Chung brings her clear and thoughtful prose to the task of untangling the legacy of her adoption . . . Transracial adoption, often framed as a simple act of altruistic love on the part of white parents, looks far more complicated under Chung’s kind but implacably honest gaze.” —Huffington Post

“[A] stirring new memoir . . . Chung’s book is, at heart, a love story between sisters, and a hopeful witness to the ways people with multiple ambiguous losses can help each other heal.” —The International Examiner

“Chung reveals the gifts and curses that come from a deep exploration into the truth of our family roots . . . Touching on race, family, and the failure of simple labels to define us, Chung instead offers a masterful narrative that proves concepts like culture and origin are simply insufficient in elucidating who we truly are. As conversations about what community truly means continue to remain acutely topical . . . the timing of Chung’s memoir could not be better. In the gifted hands of an immensely talented writer, All You Can Ever Know ultimately becomes more than Chung’s personal journey, instead serving as an eye-opening conduit to the universal desire we all share to love and be loved in return.” —SF Weekly

“[An] insightful memoir . . . Chung’s clear, direct approach to her experience, which includes the birth of her daughter as well as her investigation of her family, reveals her sharp intelligence and willingness to examine difficult emotions.” —Booklist

“In this gorgeous memoir, Chung examines our ties to family and what it means to belong.” —Real Simple

“All You Can Ever Know insists that the stories we use to understand ourselves should be allowed as much complexity as the truth dictates . . . Chung never gives in to that siren call of comforting fictions—instead, what’s most admirable is her deep commitment, every step of the way, to sit with the hard truth of the matter and accept it . . . Now, Chung says, she dispenses with thinking about adoption as either right or wrong, good or bad—instead, it’s a complex process that only benefits from more knowledge and compassion on all sides. Oversimplified stories based on meager information will never be better than the truth, no matter how painful. All You Can Ever Know’s main lesson is that the truth is far more interesting anyway.” —The Rumpus

“Chung’s dynamic prose tackles identity and the forces that shape it . . . What Chung painstakingly unearths about her birth family is thrilling and unsettling, and her articulation of her findings averts tropish feel-good stereotypes. Here, the open wound at the heart of this exquisite narrative heals slightly skewed, exactly as it should.” —The Minneapolis Star Tribune

“All You Can Ever Know is thoughtful, moving, and empathetic, asking timely questions about identity and belonging in America. An expansive story, told in graceful prose, it shines a light on the complexities of transracial adoption.” —Longreads

“In her glistening debut, All You Can Ever Know, Nicole Chung delves into the knotty question of how to define what family means . . . What she learns upends the tidy story she grew up hearing about her adoption, but Chung, a truth-seeker, does not shy away from the messier reality she finds. All You Can Ever Know holds special resonance for fellow adoptees, especially those navigating transracial adoptions. Yet Chung achieves the goal of many memoirists: She renders the specifics of her story so precisely that it becomes universal.” —The Portland Mercury

“All You Can Ever Know is an incredible, humanist look at adoption, and an exploration of the scars Chung has from the subtler, unlabeled racism she experienced growing up in a homogenous plot of America . . . [T]he book should be required reading for anyone contemplating parenthood.” —Romper

“She’s one of my favorite essayists of all time, the kind who expands my mind with every sentence and makes me reconsider everything.” —Gary Shteyngart, for Vulture

“[A]n intimate reflection on adoption and family, a gorgeously-wrought personal story with universal reverberations. ” —Maud Newton, for Barnes & Noble Review

“[A]s unique, affecting, heartstring-pulling as this debut is — Nicole Chung’s All You Can Ever Know will resonate with any sensitive, thoughtful reader who has ‘[found] the courage to question what [they’ve] been told’ — about family, history, their very selves . . . Raw, open, forthright, Chung’s personal odyssey is an intimate journey toward self-understanding and acceptance.” —Christian Science Monitor

“In her debut memoir All You Can Ever Know, Nicole Chung challenges the traditional adoption narrative and sheds light on the complicated reality of being a transracial adoptee . . . All You Can Ever Know is yet another reminder of how important representation is, both as an exercise in empathy across cultural boundaries and as catharsis for those who have had undergone similar experiences.” —Chicago Review of Books

“Brimming with secrets sure to keep you captivated, Nicole Chung’s memoir delivers a powerful, honest saga exploring the meaning of family.” —Paste Magazine

“Chung . . . explores not just her own history but also the larger notion of having a history at all. She invites the reader to join her on the intimate and sometimes heartbreaking journey of discovering—and rediscovering—her identity as a person and a writer. Particularly affecting is the story of Chung’s relationship with her own daughter, born, poetically, as Chung commits to searching for her birth family.” —Pacific Standard

“As she wrestles with her identity as an adopted person and as the sole person of color in most of her childhood circles, Chung confronts universal questions: Who am I? How does that shape how I interact with the world? Chung’s origin story is messier than she’d hoped, but All You Can Ever Know is a tale told with empathy and grace.” —BookPage

“Born to Korean immigrants in Seattle and raised by white parents in the U.S., Chung endured prejudice her adoptive family could never understand. Her reflections on identity and culture explore the need to belong.” —TIME

“[A] dazzling memoir . . . it is the searing emotional depths of [Chung’s] writing that carries her narrative. Chung is someone who has done the emotional labour of excavating her feelings and articulating them in a perceptive and incisive way.” —The National

“In her memoir, All You Can Ever Know, Nicole Chung takes the qualities that make her writing sing—warmth, inquisitiveness, and deep personal investment in the words she types—and turns them inward. Her debut is an investigation into her past in which she aims to leave no stone—or emotion—unturned.” —Shondaland

“This memoir lovingly delves into what it means to be a parent, a child, and a member of a family.” —Good Housekeeping

“Moving, beautifully-wrought.” —AAWW’s The Margins

“This memoir about interracial adoption and the unshakeable ties of family is inexhaustibly insightful.” —The Millions

“It’s a tricky narrative to weave without coming across as resentful or righteous or ungrateful, largely because there’s so little out there written about the adoption experience that goes beyond ‘adoption speak’ — saying things the right way for fragile hearts and severed bonds, newly orchestrated connective tissue and hopes to just be a family . . . Now, with her first book, All You Can Ever Know, [Chung] has . . . written a beautiful memoir that is also an adoption story, and an adoption story that is also a beautiful memoir.” —Electric Literature

“[A] beautifully written memoir . . . It’s these universal themes of family, belonging and identity that make All You Can Ever Know such a compelling read.” —Hazlitt

“All You Can Ever Know . . . is an eye-opening account of what it’s like to grow up without access to your biological family. Chung maintains a wholehearted compassion for both her biological and adoptive families’ toughest choices—and shares what it means to grow up in the space between them.” —Kenyon Review

“[T]he only thing a writer really needs to pull off a memoir is an ability to not tell their story but to rebuild it in a way that makes a reader feel like they can step inside it . . . Nicole Chung’s account of her upbringing with her white, Catholic family in Oregon, which she was adopted into, does exactly that. But considering that Chung is an editor at Catapult and formerly The Toast (RIP), it’s not surprising that she makes storytelling feel less like a skill and more like a magic power.” —InStyle

“Personal and expansive, intimate and wise, Nicole Chung’s memoir is a fiercely successful balancing act of family, identity, becoming and love . . . Chung writes with warmth and earnestness, exploring deftly the complicated questions that tangle the story of her life. She always maintains care and compassion for every character: her birth parents, her adoptive parents, and the woman she would come to know as her sister. No one is idealized, or burdened with the full brunt of her hopes, her grief and her longing . . . Compassion-filled, truthful and page-turningly compelling, All You Can Ever Know is dexterous, honest work. Exquisite and inquisitive, it gets at the heart of what it means to belong.” —Bookreporter.com

“[A] soulful and searching account of identity, both as constructed by ourselves over time and as taught by those who reared us . . . Chung’s story cuts to the heart of the complicated ways we love, let go, and find one another.” —Read It Forward

“Moving and intimate, All You Can Ever Know is a candid exploration of motherhood, race and the lengths we all go to to feel like we belong.” —PureWow

“[Chung] sets out to find her biological family, later learning that the story she had always been told about them isn’t actually the truth. This inspiring memoir tells the story of a girl who never gives up and finds happiness in discovering where she comes from and who she really is.” —POPSUGAR

“Thoughtful, conscientious, compassionate . . . Chung, as protagonist and writer, is inspiring in her grace. Her story—as she tells it—is also funny in places, though subtly so. It’s also, as the title suggests, a reflection on the power of knowledge and learning, with their capacity to comfort and prepare one for what comes next, as well as the limits of knowledge, its ability to discomfit, and the idea that there are some things even the most curious person may not want to know.” —Vol. 1 Brooklyn

“[Nicole Chung] tells the story of her childhood and later, her search for her birth family, in gorgeous and precise prose. Nicole honors her own experiences while also opening up, again and again, doors to universal truths. Truly, it is one of the most thoughtful and important memoirs I’ve ever read . . . Nicole’s writing on motherhood, intergenerational trauma, and race is nothing short of brilliant.” —The Daily Rumpus

“Chung creates a suspenseful story with her avalanches of questions and unexpected discoveries, and her hard-won insights into the nature of identity. She has many thoughts about adoption, but this is also an emotional and level-headed book about the rewards of questioning family expectations in order to come to terms with the complicated truth.” —Shelf Awareness

“This is a story that all of us, whether we’re directly affected by the adoption triad or not, need to know . . . A beautifully written memoir that you won’t soon forget. The story will stay with you for some time, and if you’re anything like me, it will challenge the idea of what family is supposed to be.” —Adoption.com

Named one of the season’s best/most anticipated books by The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, TODAY Show, TIME, Newsday, Vanity Fair, Apple Books, Amazon, ELLE, Vulture, BuzzFeed, The Boston Globe, CBC Books, The Seattle Times, SF Weekly, Huffington Post, Pacific Standard, NYLON, Publishers Weekly, Harper’s Bazaar, Paste Magazine, Poets & Writers, BookRiot, The Millions, The Rumpus, Literary Hub, Christian Science Monitor, Colorlines, & more

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR ALL YOU CAN EVER KNOW

“Adoption is neither an incident nor a process—it is an evergreen story of lives growing and resisting simple definitions. Chung’s All You Can Ever Know takes the grammar of adoption—nouns, verbs, and direct object—and with extraordinary integrity remakes them into a narrative about what it means to be a subject. A primary document of witness, Chung writes her memoir as a transracial adoptee with honesty, wisdom, and love. Her search and what she discovers offer us life’s meaning and purpose of the very highest order.” —Min Jin Lee, author of Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko, a National Book Award Finalist

“This book moved me to my very core. As in all her writing, Nicole Chung speaks eloquently and honestly about her own personal story, then widens her aperture to illuminate all of us. All You Can Ever Know is full of insights on race, motherhood, and family of all kinds, but what sets it apart is the compassion Chung brings to every facet of her search for identity and every person portrayed in these pages. This book should be required reading for anyone who has ever had, wanted, or found a family—which is to say, everyone.” —Celeste Ng, New York Times bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere

“I’ve been waiting for this writer, and this book—and everything else she’ll write—and now it is here.” —Alexander Chee, national bestselling author of The Queen of the Night and How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

“This book will break your heart in all the best ways. Nicole Chung’s intimate exploration of motherhood, race, and identity is a beautiful personal story that also reveals something profound about our culture and country. I didn’t want it to end.” —Jessica Valenti, New York Times bestselling author of Sex Object: A Memoir

“An urgent, incandescent exploration of what it can mean to love, and of who gets to belong, in an increasingly divided country. Nicole Chung’s powerful All You Can Ever Know is necessary reading, a dazzling light to help lead the way during these times.” —R. O. Kwon, national bestselling author of The Incendiaries

“In All You Can Ever Know, Nicole Chung examines her family history with rigor and grace, which is the best possible way to set about the prospect of asking questions of the people who made you. The book is lovely, and loving, and committed to honesty and exploration. It never shies away from reality. Nicole’s earnestness, her great capacity for affection, her commitment to dealing justly with others, her sense of humor are all vividly present here.” —Daniel Mallory Ortberg, New York Times bestselling author of Texts from Jane Eyre and The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror

“Compassionate and compelling. A memoir about understanding yourself as a daughter so that you may understand yourself as a mother.” —Rainbow Rowell, No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of Carry On

“Nicole Chung has written a book for everyone, but the real gift is for adoptees. With her rare talent for telling a story while also telling you what it means, All You Can Ever Know is Chung at top form. This is a book not to miss and an adoption story we need. Read everything Nicole Chung writes. Start now.” —Matthew Salesses, author of The Hundred-Year Flood

“All You Can Ever Know is a memoir that reads with such urgency and emotional depth that at times it feels like an overheard confession, one not meant for my ears. But Nicole Chung grabbed me by the hand and made me bear witness alongside her. Her writing is so strong, her voice so sure, even when she’s questioning everything, that I’ll follow her wherever she goes next.” —Vanessa Martini, City Lights Books (San Francisco, CA)

“In All You Can Ever Know, Nicole Chung shares her story of daughterhood and motherhood with such thoughtfulness and honesty that it feels like a privilege to read. Her language is elegant and precise, and her questions—of identity, race, and family—feel necessary. By the end, you feel comforted that there are writers and thinkers like her in the world.” —Tyler Goodson, Avid Bookshop (Athens, GA)

“Reading Nicole Chung’s memoir about adoption and searching for her birth family feels like an honor. Her graceful, lucid prose touches you no matter what kind of family you do or do not have. This is an essential read for everyone.” —Anton Bogomazov, Politics and Prose (Washington, DC)

“Nicole Chung’s memoir is a moving account of a young woman’s gradually evolving understanding of family and of herself as she uncovers the truth about the circumstances behind her adoption . . . This is an extraordinary account, told with candor and empathy. And her story is also an important, specifically Asian American story. Though the transracial adoption of Asian Americans into white families and communities is common, few books have been written from the perspective of the adoptee. Nicole Chung has much to teach us, and readers approaching this book with a heart as opens as hers will find much to nourish them here.” —Karen Maeda Allman, Elliott Bay Book Company (Seattle, WA)

“Nicole Chung has crafted a moving and profound exploration about adoption and families that readers will find thought provoking regardless of their family of origin. Anyone who has ever questioned their role among their relatives and how it affects their perspective and relationships will find much to ponder in All You Can Ever Know. This memoir is a treasure trove for book clubs, as well as a ‘must read’ for fans of the fiction of Jacquelyn Mitchard, or memoirs such as The Art of Waiting. Stunningly honest, exquisitely rendered, and unforgettable, Chung is a much-needed new voice in the canon of literature regarding adoption.” —Pamela Klinger-Horn, Excelsior Bay Books (Excelsior, MN)