All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung

All You Can Ever Know

A Memoir

Nicole Chung

Catapult · Print & ebook · October 15, 2019

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?

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Who it’s for
A candid memoir about adoption, belonging, race, and the stories families inherit.
Genres
Adoption & Fostering, Asian & Asian American Lives, Personal Memoirs
Published
Catapult, October 15, 2019

About this book

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.

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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.

Stories We Inherit

A candid memoir about adoption, belonging, race, and the stories families inherit.

Come here for

  • Unsentimental reflection on adoption, race, and family
  • A layered search for belonging across two families

Expect

  • Warm candor alongside painful questions about inherited stories
  • An intimate memoir with room for conversation

Where it sits

Personal Memoirs74%
Adoption & Fostering73%
Asian & Asian American Lives54%

Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.

Publisher categories

  • Cultural Heritage Lives
  • Women's Lives
  • Adoption & Fostering
Authors
Nicole Chung
Publisher
Catapult
Published
October 15, 2019
Format
Print & ebook
Reading lane
Cultural Heritage Lives