All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir
Written by Nicole Chung
Narrated by Janet Song
4/5
()
About this audiobook
With the same warmth, candor, and startling insight that has made her a beloved voice, 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.
Nicole Chung
Nicole Chung is the author of the national bestseller All You Can Ever Know. Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, the Washington Post, Time, and many other outlets, All You Can Ever Know was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, a semifinalist for the PEN Open Book Award, an Indies Choice Honor Book, and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. Chung's writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, Time, GQ, Slate, and the Guardian. Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, she now lives in the Washington, DC, area.
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Reviews for All You Can Ever Know
266 ratings21 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5As someone considering adoption, this was very poignant and very important.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book provokes so many emotions. I can see why it would have been a great choice for a book club. The book highlights several poignant points that do not have a one size fits all solution - adoption in general, interracial adoption, school bullying, racism, immigration, abandonment, and self-acceptance. When reading a memoir, I too can become judgmental quickly in wanting to “tell” the author to move on from the past and to focus on the incredible blessing that she is loved by the adoring adoptive parents and their extended families. However, I had never experienced the challenges she endured over so many years, so I am fine for her to repeatedly describe why it’s important to her to connect with her biological family and the sense of insecurity when trying to fit into that family. My biggest disappointment with this audiobook has to be with the narration. Seems to me the narrator tried to mimic an accent of a Korean immigrant even though the author was born and raised in the US without ever speaking Korean. I checked out a few other books narrated by the same person just to confirm that it was not her regular accent. It was not. The forced accent is distracting and a form of racism, in my opinion. This is one of the books that I would have enjoyed more reading than listening to.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A book hasn’t made me cry in a long time.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5As an adopted Asian American this book is incredibly moving and powerful. I personally resonated with many of the stories mentioned and felt a sense of peace to know others within this community have gone through similar experiences. This book is also of value even if you have not experienced this walk of life but can help you better understand others.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What a beautiful memoir about finding ones roots. I truly loved it!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is an amazing book... if you're someone who's thinking about adoption or an adoptee yourself, you should definitely read this. It's the beautifully written story of Nicole Chung's personal experience as an adopted child who seeks to find her family. It's honest, heart-wrenching and heartwarming at alternate turns. I wanted to hear more, but I appreciated having such an honest look at cross-cultural adoption and the need for more honesty and empathy in considering such things.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A touching memoir by a Korean woman who was given up for adoption in the US by her family. Nicole was born prematurely to parents whose marriage was in distress and decided they could not handle the financial strain of a premmie. Her white adoptive parents raised her lovingly in a small Oregon town, but never addressed her cultural needs, her isolation and the racist and cruel treatment she received, especially at school. No mentor, no counselor stepped forward to help and her parents were completely oblivious, possibly because Nicole was afraid of hurting them and perhaps could not even identify the source of her unhappiness. After she married and became pregnant, Nicole became aware of her options as an adoptee and took steps to reach out to her sister Cindy, who had been told that Nicole had died at birth. Their relationship, and Nicole's discovery of her birth mother's treatment of Cindy, is revelatory and beautifully told by an author whom the reader would enjoy hearing from again and again, to follow the family's path to healing and love.Quote: "Was it something we did, as babies, as little children? Something we lacked that made us easier, possible, to part with? I've never met an adoptee who has blamed their birth parents for their decision - we're more likely to turn inward, looking for fault."
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I found the book a bit slow moving, but was interested in the topics of adoption and racism. I know people similar situations to the author and this gave me insight to what they have gone through and some emotions that they may deal with.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Ponderous, plainly written, some useful perspectives but i couldn't relate to her child centric traditional straight laced POV and the writing was uninspired and slow, it was a slog to get through, honestly
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Serviceable memoir about the impact of transracial adoption on a young woman of Korean descent who was raised by white parents. When the author goes looking for her birth parents, she unearths the disturbing secrets of her family of origin. A quick read, but padded with oddly selected details, much repetition, and too many rhetorical questions.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is an unflinching glimpse at the complex nature of identity as a transracial adoptee. As someone who wants to adopt her children someday, I found a lot to chew on. This is an engaging and thought-provoking memoir.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Nicole grew up knowing she was adopted, but it wasn't until she was an adult and pregnant for her own child that she decided to search for her birth family. This memoir recounts her wrestling with being a Korean American in an all-white family and town, knowing she was loved but also discovering that her adoption story wasn't as simple as it seemed.Adoption is complicated. I've known adoptees who were, similarly to Nicole, told as young children that their birth parents couldn't keep them but loved them enough to give them a better life. I thought of them often while I read Nicole's story, though none of them had the added challenge of a transracial adoption. She deals with all sorts of complications, thinking through exactly why she decided to contact her birth family, and what relationships arose as a result (and didn't). Interspersed in her memories are chapters about her sister, Cindy, and her experiences growing up in the family that had chosen to give Nicole up for adoption. Well-told, thought-provoking personal journey, and I'll look forward to discussing it with my book club.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A sensitive portrait of a Korean girl adopted by a whilte family and raised in a white community in Northwest USA. Nicole shares her quest to find her identity and self acceptance through her childhood and young adulthood. Nicole Chung gives insight ito the complexities of belonging to two cultures and occasionally feeling that one does not belong anywhere.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5read this for work but happily!
i'm adopted and so so many of the questions she asked in here really struck a chord with me. she's a super articulate and moving author while still writing with a definite purpose. loved her work, will definitely read more. i feel like this review is terrible bc i'm still processing but yah it was really lovely. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This was an interesting read but not one that kept my interest all that much. There where times when I felt it was being drawn out. This is my first book by Nicole Chung. I am not familiar with her writing style.In All you can ever know, Nicole is writing about her adoption and her struggles in wanting to learn about her birth parents. Her struggles of being adopted by white people. Not feeling she belongs in her adoptive family or in the school she was attending since she didn't see other Korean children.I felt that Nicole's adoptive parents were wrong in not telling her things or even teaching her a little about her Korean Nationality. This was a good book for our book club because it got the whole group talking and sharing our thoughts.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gives a perspective on transracial adoption that I'd wondered about. How does that loved little child really fit in to a community of white only families if they are not white? Nicole does a great job looking at the issue. Really made me think
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What a thoughtful and thought provoking book on being adopted by parents who don’t share your racial identity.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I was eager to read Nicole Chung's memoir -- there has been lots of buzz about this and being Chinese American I thought this would resonate. Growing up in a very white neighborhood of upstate New York, I could relate to Nicole's feeling of alienation and the looks and stares that she got in school or around town. Although I'm not adopted, I remember how strange it felt for my sister and I to be the only Asian kids in our school. Questions like 'why are your eyes like that' or 'how do your parents tell you apart' might come across as naive curiosity, but still sting. For Chung, having to also deal with the uncertainty of adoption must have made this even more difficult.However, I felt like this memoir was too angst-ridden. Yes, I understand that adoption carries a psychological burden, but there were times reading this book where I wished I could tell her to just get over it. There so many bigger tragedies in life -- the loss of a spouse, a parent, a child, physical abuse, war, terminal illness -- I could go on and on. Reading this felt like a slog through a 'woe is me' type of story. The one redeeming part of this memoir was finding a sister to love, beautifully written and enjoyable to witness.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Phenomenal. Incredibly poignant memoir about adoption, family, race, and just being a human.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Best for: Anyone interested in a beautifully written memoir that explores adoption, transracial adoption, race, and family. In a nutshell: Author Nicole Chung was born to Korean parents in the US and adopted by a white couple. In this book, she explores what it meant to be one of the only Asian people around growing up, as well as how she connected with some of her birth family.Worth quoting:“People were not so simple; people could be and think and want many different things at once.”Why I chose it:I’ve seen so many people online raving about it.Review:This is a lovely book. When thinking about words that could describe it, I could also have gone with powerful, honest, or insightful. But I chose lovely because the writing is just that, as is the way the author handles complex and complicated issues. Nicole Chung was born two months premature to parents who had moved to the US from Korea just five years prior to her birth. They already had one child together; they chose to place Ms. Chung up for adoption, but not through what we would probably think of as regular channels (i.e., an agency). Instead, someone working in the hospital knows the couple who would become Ms. Chung’s adoptive parents and alerts them to this possibility.Ms. Chung is raised in the pacific northwest, in a part of Oregon with very few other Asian individuals. Her parents are always open about the fact of her adoption, but they don’t take steps to help Ms. Chung learn about her Korean heritage, and she doesn’t not pursue it independently much until she reaches college. Once she is married, she decides to see if she can get in touch with her birth family, motivated further when she learns that she may have a sister.This book explores one story, and it is not claiming to be universal, but still, the issues it addresses can apply to so many of us, I think. There are obviously some specifics (e.g. the reality of transracial adoption) that may only be directly relatable to similarly situated individuals, but the overall concepts of belonging and family, about other possible life scenarios, about whether a choice was the best one (and if that is even the right question to ask), about how our families influence who we become, and even about nature vs. nurture, they all take up space here. I’ll be thinking about this one long after I pick up my next read.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Korean-American woman, adopted as a baby by a white family and raised in a predominantly white community, examines issues of cultural identity, loss, and family in this thoughtful and moving memoir.