All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir Paperback – October 15, 2019 by Nicole Chung

Description

Author: Chung Nicole

Brand: Catapult

Color: Navy

Edition: Reprint

Package Dimensions: 22x213x270

Number Of Pages: 256

Release Date: 15-10-2019

Details: Product Description A NATIONAL BESTSELLERThis 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. Review Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for AutobiographyLong-listed for the PEN Open Book AwardFinalist for the ABA Indies Choice Adult Nonfiction Book of the Year AwardA Finalist for the 2019 NAIBA Book of the Year in NonfictionNamed a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, NPR, Time, The Boston Globe, and more”[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.” ―Today”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”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.” ―The Washington Post”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 stayed up way too late one night reading it because the story just pulled me in. 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” Revisits her coming of age with a deep melancholy, favoring clarity over sentimentality . . . 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”The honesty with which Chung grapples with this kind of racial erasure is a hallmark of her 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 desi