Review: All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung

I'm taking a memoir writing course this semester so recently I have been eager to get my hands on anything non-fiction. My main dilemma: how does one write honestly about themselves and their life? I've always found it incredibly difficult to be honest in my writing, and writing often felt like the place where I could lie and get away with it, even when writing about myself. Of course I could be a unicorn-owning, mathematically competent girl with seventeen dogs. I could be whoever I wanted to be in my writing! But, as it turned out, that genre is called fiction. So, writing non-fiction has been a challenge for me. Every week I sit at my keyboard trying to tell my life like it is or was, and fighting off the urge to add embellishment. But it would make the story so much betterrrrrr, my subconscious whines, and I have to shut it up every time. Point is: writing non-fiction (particularly about yourself, your life, and your most vulnerable moments) is fucking HARD. So, props to anyone that does it and does it well. And for me, All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung does it so, so well. I finished this memoir in practically one sitting. I sat with it by the pool on my first day in Florida, and I was so enthralled by it that I didn't notice that I was getting a terrible sunburn and holy shit, my nose has second-degree burns and my mom is going to kill me?? Cue: Aloe Vera.

Nicole Chung was adopted when she was a couple of months old. Her birth parents are Korean, and her adoptive parents are a white couple who were unable to conceive. The well-meaning adoptive parents handle the race question by not handling at all, taking on the, as it seems, deeply scarring "color-blind" approach. Your adoption was for the best, is the constant, empty refrain that Chung hears throughout her childhood and adulthood, even after she has become acquainted with her birth family. Chung grows up in a very white Oregon town with lots of racism (though she doesn't have the name for that yet) and wishes that she looked like everyone else, that she had someone who looked like her to look up to. She also wonders about her birth parents: why did they give her up? What were they like? Her parents answer her questions with short, rehearsed lines and carefully avoid the topic of her birth parents. The message is super clear: you're our daughter, no one else's, let's please not talk about this because it makes us uncomfortable. However, when Chung gets pregnant and is about to have a child of her own, the questions about her origin become more and more urgent. This is the first person she'll ever know someone who she shares blood with. She goes on a quest to find her birth family and discovers the truth about them, unearthing her family secrets and the past that was always hidden from her. That's all I'll reveal because this book does have surprising twists (and manages to tell a story even though it's all true!) so I will leave the spoilers out. 

As a writer, Chung is gentle and warm, yet also honest and straightforward. Her writing is crystal clear, and every sentence was meaningful and easy to comprehend. She's remarkably self-aware and honest with us, and addresses the tricky question of adoption frankly, acknowledging its complications and also its beauty. She tackles issues of race unflinchingly, and her attitude towards motherhood is lovely and vulnerable. Even as someone who has never been a mother, I was able to empathize with her emotions because they were all so solid, so well-explained and delivered that they felt personal. 

It's already been a week since I finished the book, but I haven't stopped thinking about it. The message is clear and urgent, and Chung is a faithful storyteller who manages to be real with her emotions and powerful in her execution, with very little left unclear or diluted. She expresses herself honestly, and I sound like a broken record, but for me, the most valuable aspect of all writing —fiction or non-fiction—is honesty in storytelling, even if the story is completely made up. Nicole Chung manages to deliver all of these aspects in All You Can Ever Know. 5 stars!