All You Can Ever Know, a memoir of adoption by Nicole Chung.

 

Publisher: Catapult

Publication date: October 2 2018

Pages: 240

This is a review of a ebook that I bought

Nicole Chung was born months too early, and placed in adoption by her  Seattle based Korean parents. She was adopted when she was two months old and grew up in a loving white family in Oregon, who wanted nothing more than the best for her and to give her a better life. But while she grew up, she slowly learned about the visible and invisible racial prejudice that her parents and the white community around her not always saw, and the growing questions about her adoption and identity. When she was expecting a baby, her questions grow more and more; was the beautiful life-saving fairytale-like story about her adoption the whole truth? In this book Nicole Chung takes you on her journey to the answers to her life questions, in a search and eventual meeting with her birth family and painful family secrets. It is written beautifully and Nicole's story is very gripping and moving. You can just imagine through her words the difficulties and feelings adoptees deal with, something not everyone knows. She just shows that adoption is not the perfect picture everyone thinks it is. I loved it that she was able to bond with her biological sister Cindy and their father, but it was sad that she only could have a few phone calls with her biological mother, who abused cindy when she was little, and how Nicole felth that she was the only Asian person in her community, and was bullied, which was heartbreaking. It is a beautiful memoir though, and I am looking forward to read Nicole Chung's new book!!