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

“A family story of heartbreaking truth — personal in its detail, universal in its complexity.” —Entertainment Weekly

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, Jezebel, Bon Appétit, Electric Literature, & 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
Published in the UK by Pushkin Press, in the Netherlands by Querido, in Russia by Eksmo

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

Nicole Chung was placed for adoption by her Korean immigrant parents and raised by a white family in a sheltered 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.

“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 Pachinko, a National Book Award Finalist

“[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

“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

“[A] stunning debut memoir, a book that confronts enormous pain with precision, clarity, and grace . . . in 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

“[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)

“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

“[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

“I’ve been waiting for this writer, and this book—and everything else she’ll write—and now it is here.” —Alexander Chee, author of 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, author of Little Fires Everywhere

“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

“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

“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 . . . Did she ever feel like her adoptive parents weren’t her real parents? . . . 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

“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

“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

“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

“In All You Can Ever Know, Nicole Chung examines her family history with rigor and grace. The book is lovely, and loving, and committed to honesty and exploration. It never shies away from reality. Chung’s earnestness, her great capacity for affection, her commitment to dealing justly with others, her sense of humor are all vividly present here.” —Daniel M. Lavery, author of Something That May Shock and Discredit You

“The book is an extraordinary, honest, nuanced and compassionate look at adoption, race in America and families in general. It’s also such an engaging read . . . I read it months ago, and I still think about it and quote some of the lines in this book at least weekly.” —Jasmine Guillory, Code Switch, NPR

“Just fabulous.” —Emma Straub, All of It, WYNC

“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

“[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

“Family secrets are powerful, and Nicole Chung’s memoir offers an honest look at what happened when she faced her own. A transracial adoptee, Chung grew up being told that her biological parents gave her up to offer her a ‘better life.’ But as a grown woman expecting her own child, Chung questioned that narrative and began to search for the couple. All You Can Ever Know chronicles that search, delivering a powerful saga about identity with revelations to keep you captivated from cover to cover.” —Paste Magazine, Best Memoirs of the Decade

“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

“Chung’s memoir takes on a sleuth-like quality as she describes the process of uncovering her birth family . . . All You Can Ever Know is her chance to fill out her own story . . . [Chung] beautifully expose[s] the grains of an author’s life through the exploration of their place in a family . . . [showing] us there are many ways to move towards our unknowable futures via the stories of our past.” —The Spectator

“This moving memoir by a Korean-born author who grew up in Oregon is a touching meditation on twofold cultural inheritance, adoption and finding your roots. All You Can Ever Know tells both a personal story and a universal one, discussing reverently the experience of growing up in a community where something about you endlessly sets you apart.” —Waterstones

“[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

“[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

“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

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

“Books like Chung’s can obviously be life-changing for adoptees who read them—but I think they can also be life-changing for the next generation of adoptees. If you are considering adopting a child of color, this book will help you on your journey. It will help you prepare for situations that you may never have thought about before. It will help you address your views on racism, microaggressions, and how you will navigate a child of color through those experiences when you are from a place of privilege. It will open your eyes to an adoptee’s experience that is fair, honest, and raw. And above all, it will place the voice of a transracial adoptee in the spotlight.” —Electric Literature

“This book pulses with desire to know where we come from, even if the only outcome we can expect is to know ourselves better.” —Caroline Kim, for Literary Hub’s Book Marks

“Adoption is often painted as a one-dimensional happy ending, but this book offers the reader a more nuanced understanding. Chung, herself a Korean-American adoptee, takes us on a journey to uncover the truth about her birth family that coincides with the birth of her own child. While stereotypes are often used against AAPI women to make judgments about their reproductive choices, transracial adoption is never black and white and you can’t close Chung’s book without seeing that.” —Sung Yeon Choimorrow, executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF), Business Insider

“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

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

“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 . . . 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

“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

“[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

“In her stunning memoir, Nicole Chung gives a searing, clear-eyed account of the journey to find the truth about her roots and identity . . . If you have ever felt like an outsider in the very circles where everyone else expects you to belong without question, the author’s articulation of how it feels to be displaced at your core will be a loud echo to your soul . . . Chung writes with a rage and honesty that comes from self-examination.” —The Mantle

“Gorgeous and precise prose . . . 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

“[A] brave and brilliant memoir about adoption . . . What makes Chung’s memoir so remarkable is the way in which it forces you to think about how adoption stories are told.” —i newspaper

“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, The Bookseller, CBC Books, The Seattle Times, TSF Weekly, Huffington Post, Pacific Standard, Stylist Magazine, NYLON, Publishers Weekly, Harper’s Bazaar, Paste Magazine, Poets & Writers, BookRiot, The Millions, The Rumpus, Literary Hub, Christian Science Monitor, Colorlines, & more