Asian American Literature Fans

A Review of Nicole Chung’s All You Can Ever Know (Catapult, 2018)
By Stephen Hong Sohn

So, this memoir has been getting rave reviews! Here’s an example from Publishers Weekly: “In her stunning memoir, freelance writer Chung tracks the story of her own adoption, from when she was born premature and spent months on life support to the decision, while pregnant with her first child, to search for her birth family. Growing up the only person of color in an all-white family and neighborhood in a small Oregon town five hours outside of Portland, Chung felt out of place. She kept a tally of other Asians she saw but could go years without seeing anyone she didn’t recognize. She knew very little about her birth parents—only the same story she was told again and again by her adoptive parents: “Your birth parents had just moved here from Korea. They thought they wouldn’t be able to give you the life you deserved.” Decades later, Chung, with the help of a “search angel,” an intermediary who helps unite adoptive families, decided to track them down, hoping to at least get her family medical history, but what she found was a story far more complicated than she imagined. Chung’s writing is vibrant and provocative as she explores her complicated feelings about her transracial adoption (which she “loved and hated in equal measure”) and the importance of knowing where one comes from.”

Already, this review gives us enough context to know that this memoir deviates from some of the other previously published versions, which often focus on the transnational contexts that derived out of the Korean War and helped to engender decades of adoptions. In this case, Chung is adopted from a Korean immigrant family living in the United States. Though the adoption is closed, Chung eventually discovers that she can get some information about her birth family. The detail of the “search angel” provided up in the review is an interesting one because Chung does admit some level of discomfort over the intermediary that can literally profit off the adoptee’s search for her birth family.

What I appreciated about this memoir was Chung’s deft handling of the complicated family dynamics that she must navigate. By the time she has reunited with her biological sister, the complications of what happened between her biological father, mother, and her siblings makes it difficult to figure out her own path back into their lives. Fortunately, Chung’s adoptive parents are quite open to her search, which provides her enough space to find out exactly how she would like to proceed. Perhaps, the most heartwarming element of this novel is the siblinghood that she is able to develop, a trajectory that Chung makes clear she could never have predicated. It is this poignancy that truly makes this memoir so unexpectedly uplifting.

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Review Author: Stephen Hong Sohn
Review Editor: Gnei Soraya Zarook

If you have any questions or want us to consider your book for review, please don’t hesitate to contact us via email!
Prof. Stephen Hong Sohn at ssohnucr@gmail.com
Gnei Soraya Zarook, PhD Student in English, at gzaro001@ucr.edu