Nicole Chung

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.

A Memoir

All You Can Ever Know

Lizelle G

Unbelievably moved by Nicole’s strength and powerful honesty that shines through every single sentence. Her story is so specifically unique yet somehow feels the most familiar, filled with equal parts awe and love.

This book moved me to my very core’ Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, NPR, Time, The Boston Globe, Real Simple, Buzzfeed, Jezebel and Bustle Growing up in a sheltered Oregon town, Nicole Chung was the only Korean she knew. Taunted in the playground, and constantly reminded that she was different, she dreamt of one day looking in the mirror and feeling as thought she belonged. The story her mother told her about her birth parents was always the same: they had made the ultimate sacrifice in the hopes of giving her a better life. But years later, grown up and expecting a child of her own, Nicole begins to wonder if her mother’s story is the whole truth. As she embarks on a search for the people who gave her up, she discovers that the deeper she digs, the darker and more surprising the truth. Heart-rending yet endlessly hopeful, All You Can Ever Know is a compelling memoir about adoption, race, and how it feels to lose your roots – and then find them in the least expected of places.

A memoir of adoption

Nico J

The topics and reflections itself in this book are meditative, contemplative, stellar. For some reason, I thought perhaps it could have been condensed and usually that's not my ask for most books; long and meandering is not a dislike of mine. There were parts that felt disconnected but as if that wasn't the author's intent - just a lack of spark or connection in that prose that sagged beneath the heaviness of the topic. There's something missing and it's difficult to put a finger on what exactly it is, because I believe the author and the seriousness and veracity of the emotions in it. I'm not quite sure.

NICOLE. CHUNG

A Memoir of Adoption

ALL YOU CAN EVER KNOW

Eva Ströberg

Kaelan Chambers

Hannah Yoon

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER This beloved memoir "is an extraordinary, honest, nuanced and compassionate look at adoption, race in America and families in general" (Jasmine Guillory, Code Switch, NPR) What does it means 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 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 hope of giving her a better life, that forever feeling slightly out of place was her fate as a transracial adoptee. But as Nicole grew up—facing prejudice her adoptive family couldn’t see, finding her identity as an Asian American and as 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, Nicole 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.

All You Can Ever Know A Memoir

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