All You Can Ever Know

Chung was born and adopted five years after me, also in Washington state. Like me, she wrestled her whole life with feelings of shame and discomfort around her adoption. Unlike me, Chung is a woman of color, adopted into a white family in a super-white town where she stood out like a sore thumb. Unlike me, Chung took the brave step, before having her own children, of searching for her birth family.

While I read this vulnerable and beautifully written memoir, I felt like I was walking with Chung on her journey as an adoptee and mother, all the while… show more.

I enjoy reading stories that are complicated, with protagonists who are introspective and human. I like a memoir that raises questions, and a plot sequence that doesn’t always answer them fully. I like reading material that sits, or lingers, with you for days.

All You Can Ever Know is that kind of book. I bought it at an airport right before I got on a plane and didn’t close the cover until the last word had been read. Even then, though, I had to think about it all for a long, long while. Nicole’s story – an astonishingly honest account… show more.

I read this memoir of a Korean girl adopted by white parents in Oregon because the issues of race, identity, and belonging were constant in the book. 

I looked for clues in the book of how the character was feeling, since my husband and I have adopted two Asian children from Kazakhstan. Nicole’s unearthing of painful family secrets mirrored my own search for answers of finding my biological father and the impact it had on my mother. 

This book explores so many issues of identity in a straightforward style that could help anyone, adopted or not, to understand their family… show more.