“[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)
A Fall 2018 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection
An Indies Introduce Pick for Summer/Fall 2018
An October Indie Next Pick
An Official Junior Library Guild Selection
One of Amazon’s Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2018
A Library Journal Editors’ Pick for Fall 2018
Named one of the season’s best/most anticipated books by The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, Newsday, BuzzFeed, The Boston Globe, TIME, CBC Books, ELLE, Vulture, The Seattle Times, SF Weekly, Huffington Post, Pacific Standard, NYLON, Publishers Weekly, Poets & Writers, BookRiot, The Millions, The Rumpus, Literary Hub, The Everygirl & more
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.
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)
“This touching memoir explores issues of identity, racism, motherhood, and sisterhood with eloquence and grace. Highly recommended.” —Library Journal (starred review)
“[Nicole Chung] beautifully tells her life story, from growing up with adoptive white parents to uncovering the truth of where she came from.” —Entertainment Weekly
“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
“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
“[A] sensitive, clear-eyed examination…that eventually, leads to a search for her birthparents and the origin story she has never known.” —Newsday
“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
“Chung writes movingly of her search to find her birth parents; her personal quest leads not only to her own story, but also to meditations on race, parenthood, and the construction of identity.” —The Boston Globe
“[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
“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
“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
“Chung’s beautifully written memoir about adoption, parenthood, race and identity has aching honesty in every line. Ultimately, it’s a story of overlapping circles of family: the one she was born into, the one she grew up in and the one she formed…. The book reveals what happened when Chung, as an adult, began exploring the details of her adoption, unveiling the story to us like a heart-wrenching mystery being solved…. you read these pages awed by Chung’s ability to combine clear-eyed unsentimentality with faith and optimism, and to create a family not from her dreams, but from her reality. She has, by its end, built an identity ‘from what has been lost and found.'” —The Seattle Times
“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
“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…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
“This unforgettable memoir starts with one woman’s search for her birth parents and becomes a universal story of identity, family, and home.” —Barnes & Noble
“[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…. All You Can Ever Know is a book that changed me, and that will stay with me. Nicole’s writing on motherhood, intergenerational trauma, and race is nothing short of brilliant.” —The Rumpus newsletter
“[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
“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
“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
“Compassionate and astute, [Chung’s] writing has much to tell us about race, America, belonging, and adoption.” —Electric Literature
“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
“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
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
“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)
