Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography
Long-listed for the PEN Open Book Award
Finalist for the ABA Indies Choice Adult Nonfiction Book of the Year Award
A Finalist for the 2019 NAIBA Book of the Year in Nonfiction
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, NPR, Time, The Boston Globe, and more
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.
This beloved memoir “is an extraordinary, honest, nuanced and compassionate look at adoption, race in America and families in general” (Jasmine Guillory, Code Switch, NPR)
All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung
Nicole Chung’s A Living Remedy was named a Notable Book of 2023 by The New York Times and a Best Book of the Year by over a dozen outlets, including Time, USA Today, Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, Electric Literature, and TODAY. Her 2018 debut, the national bestseller All You Can Ever Know, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and NAIBA Book of the Year, a semifinalist for the PEN Open Book Award, a Barnes & Noble Great New Writers selection, and an Indies Choice Honor Book.
Chung’s writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Time, The Atlantic, Esquire, Slate, Vulture, and many other publications. Previously, she was digital editorial director at the independent publisher Catapult, where she helped lead its magazine to two National Magazine Awards; before that, she was the managing editor of The Toast and an editor at Hyphen magazine. In 2021, she was named to the Good Morning America AAPI Inspiration List honoring those “making Asian American history right now.” Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, she now lives in the Washington, DC area.