“[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)
An Indies Introduce Pick for Summer/Fall 2018
A Fall 2018 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection
A Junior Library Guild Selection
Library Journal Editors’ Pick for Fall 2018
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 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.
PRAISE FOR ALL YOU CAN EVER KNOW
“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 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
“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 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
“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
“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
“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, author of The Incendiaries
“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
“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
“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
“[Chung’s] memoir, 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
“Compassionate and astute, [Chung’s] writing has much to tell us about race, America, belonging, and adoption.” —Electric Literature
“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)
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