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ALL YOU CAN EVER KNOW

Nicole Chung

Nicole Chung's debut memoir is as stunning as it is moving, a profound and heartfelt chronicle of unexpected family.
What does it mean 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 the same warmth, candor, and startling insight that has made her a beloved voice, 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.

Nicole Chung has written for The New York Times, GQ, Longreads, BuzzFeed, Hazlitt, and Shondaland, among other publications. She is Catapult magazine's editor in chief and the former managing editor of The Toast. All You Can Ever Know is her first book.
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Published 2018-10-02 by Catapult

Book

Published 2018-10-02 by Catapult

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Nicole Chung was named by Bitch Media to the first-ever "Bitch 50," a list recognizing "the most impactful creators, artists, and activists in pop culture whose imaginations extend beyond normalizing and affirming the same mainstream messages.

ALL YOU CAN EVER KNOW is a B&N Fall 2018 DISCOVER GREAT NEW WRITERS SELECTION! Read more...

All You Can Ever Know is one of The Millions Most Anticipated books (October 2018) Read more...

UK: Pushkin Press ; Dutch: Querido ; Russian: Eksmo

Kenyon Review included it on their summer reading list, calling it "an eye-opening account of what it's like to grow up without access to your biological family. Chung maintains a wholehearted compassion for both her biological and adoptive families' toughest choicesand shares what it means to grow up in the space between them." Read more...

NEW YORK MAGAZINE'S THE CUT runs an interview with Nicole Chung Read more...

NBC NEWS/ ASIAN AMERICA (online) runs a lovely feature interview on AYCEK and Nicole Read more...

I've been waiting for this writer, and this book - and everything else she'll write - and now it is here.

In her memoir, All You Can Ever Know, Nicole Chung, who was adopted as a baby by a couple in Oregon, explores how the truths that were revealed upon finding her birth parents changed her life. Here Chung discusses growing up Asian-American in a white family, her writing and editing career and more. Read more...

Chung creates a suspenseful story with her avalanches of questions and unexpected discoveries, and her hard-won insights into the nature of identity. She has many thoughts about adoption, but this is also an emotional and level-headed book about the rewards of questioning family expectations in order to come to terms with the complicated truth.

46 Books By Women of Color to Read in 2018 - The Catapult web editor and Toast alum has written, hauntingly, about her adoption and growing up in a white family before. Her long-awaited memoir promises to explore the subject more fully: her relationship with her adoptive family, her reconnection with her birth family, beginning her own family and how she's worked to find a sense of belonging.

See NICOLE CHUNG, author of ALL YOU CAN EVER KNOW, on THE DAILY SHOW with Trevor Noah Read more...

Nicole Chung in Conversation with Mira Jacob, Read the excellent LitHub feature, will illustrations

BOOK RIOT included ALL YOU CAN EVER KNOW in "10 New October Releases to Put on Hold at the Library Right Now"it's the first one in the article! Read more...

MY DOMAINE included ALL YOU CAN EVER KNOW in an article "The Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2018 That Are Actually Worth Your Time" Read more...

In All You Can Ever Know, Nicole Chung examines her family history with rigor and grace, which is the best possible way to set about the prospect of asking questions of the people who made you. The book is lovely, and loving, and committed to honesty and exploration. It never shies away from reality. Nicole's earnestness, her great capacity for affection, her commitment to dealing justly with others, her sense of humor are all vividly present here.

BUZZFEED NEWS includes ALL YOU CAN EVER KNOW in their "These Are The Best Books Of Fall 2018"-List! Read more...

1 of 10 Books With Covers So Beautiful You Can Judge Them: "While grappling with her identity Chung exposes the truths we all endure when we try to figure out where we truly belong."

The former Toast editor beautifully tells her life story, from growing up with adoptive white parents to uncovering the truth of where she came from. Read more...

With clarity, grace, and no small amount of courage, Chung has written a powerful memoir about her experience as an adoptee, an Asian-American, a daughter, a sister, and a mother. Read more...

This book moved me to my very core. As in all her writing, Nicole Chung speaks eloquently and honestly about her own personal story, then widens her aperture to illuminate all of us. All You Can Ever Know is full of insights on race, motherhood, and family of all kinds, but what sets it apart is the compassion Chung brings to every facet of her search for identity and every person portrayed in these pages. This book should be required reading for anyone who has ever had, wanted, or found a familywhich is to say, everyone.

All You Can Ever Know made the October 2018 Indie Next List.

All You Can Ever Know is an AMAZON Best Biography/Memoir of October! Read more...

BUSTLE included Nicole Chung's tweet in an article about the #ShareYourRejection hashtag on Twitter Read more...

THE WASHINGTON POST featured it in their one of 20 Books to Read This Fall books preview Read more...

The memoir All You Can Ever Know (Catapult, Oct.) is Nicole Chung's first book, but I've been a fan of her writing for a long time - she's an alum of the beloved, now-shuttered feminist humor site The Toast and writes for numerous high-profile publications. Her book examines her experience as a transracial adoptee and chronicles her search for her biological parents in Korea, which coincided with the birth of her own child.

HUGE feature on All You Can Ever Know as the lead book of the fall preview in SF WEEKLY: "As conversations about what community truly means continue to remain acutely topical who we belong to, what aspects of our character we define ourselves by, what we each require to feel whole the timing of Chung's memoir could not be better. In the gifted hands of an immensely talented writer, the story of All You Can Ever Know ultimately becomes more than Chung's personal journey, instead serving as an eye-opening conduit to the universal desire we all share to love and be loved in return." Read more...

Each fall, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY selects only 20 titles out of ALL the university and indie presses to feature as the big books of the season and this year they have selected ALL YOU CAN EVER KNOW. Read more...

WOMEN.COM picks AYCEK as 1 of 8 Books To Read in October: "An honest depiction of how hard it is to understand where we come from and what we seek to fit in." Read more...

Stirring ... Chung's book is, at heart, a love story between sisters, and a hopeful witness to the ways people with multiple ambiguous losses can help each other heal. Read more...

This book will break your heart in all the best ways. Nicole Chung's intimate exploration of motherhood, race, and identity is a beautiful personal story that also reveals something profound about our culture and country. I didn't want it to end.

In her memoir, "All You Can Ever Know," editor, writer, and Shondaland.com contributor Nicole Chung takes the qualities that make her writing sing - warmth, inquisitiveness, and deep personal investment in the words she types - and turns them inward. Her debut is an investigation into her past in which she aims to leave no stone - or emotion - unturned. Chung has openly shared details about her adoption by white parents - both on the page and online - but "All You Can Ever Know" promises a fuller story; the journey of a woman seeking to find where she belongs.

NYLON published their interview with Nicole: 'All You Can Ever Know' Is A Powerful Look Into The Complications Of Transracial Adoption. Nicole Chung talks about her new memoir Read more...

Nicole Chung has written a book for everyone, but the real gift is for adoptees. With her rare talent for telling a story while also telling you what it means, All You Can Ever Know is Chung at top form. This is a book not to miss and an adoption story we need. Read everything Nicole Chung writes. Start now.

Nicole Chung's memoir, All You Can Ever Know, follows her search for her Korean birth parents. She was born premature and adopted by a white family in Oregon. As she grew up, Chung began to wonder if the too-perfect adoption story she'd heard as a child was actually the truth. She's spilling the family secrets in print sometime this October.

BOOK RIOT included in their fall books preview 1 of 75 Spectacular New Books You Need to Read This Fall Read more...

"Chung's search for her biological roots [...] has to be one of this year's finest books, let alone memoirs... Chung has literary chops to spare and they're on full display in descriptions of her need, pain and bravery."The Washington Post, 1 of 10 Books to Read in October Read more...

Stunning ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY review titled All You Can Ever Know is a memoir of graceful, shining empathy: "The author [...], revisits her coming of age with a deep melancholy, favoring clarity over sentimentality. She writes crisply, intimately, bringing us close to her experiences of pain, isolation, and discovery... Passages like this give All You Can Ever Know real texture, the sensations practically flowing from the page. And Chung emotionally relays her journey to becoming a writer - her path of negotiating and asserting her identity - and to learning about her birth family's rather traumatic past. Yet her empathetic, graceful prose shines brightest when she casts her gaze elsewhere: on her adoptive parents their warmth and their secrets, their struggle to talk about race or on her birth sister, Cindy, who opens Chung's eyes in adulthood, while similarly trying to find herself. Through them, Chung reveals a family story of heartbreaking truth - personal in its detail, universal in its complexity." Read more...

ALL YOU CAN EVER KNOW is on many selection- and "most anticipated Books"-lists: - An ABA Indies Introduce Selection* - An Official Junior Library Guild Selection* - 'Editors' Pick for Fall 2018, Library Journal' - Bustle, 1 of 11 Most Anticipated Books Published by Indie Presses to Have on Your Radar in 2018 - The Millions, Most Anticipated in the Second Half of 2018 The Rumpus, What to Read When You've Made It Halfway Through 2018 Read more...

Highly compelling for its depiction of a woman's struggle to make peace with herself and her identity, the book offers a poignant depiction of the irreducibly complex nature of human motives and family ties. A profound, searching memoir about 'finding the courage to question what I'd always been told.

An urgent, incandescent exploration of what it can mean to love, and of who gets to belong, in an increasingly divided country. Nicole Chung's powerful All You Can Ever Know is necessary reading, a dazzling light to help lead the way during these times.

HELLO GIGGLES included ALL YOU CAN EVER KNOW in their books coming out this week: "All You Can Ever Know is a gorgeously written memoir of culture, identity, and belonging. It's an absolute must-read this fall." Read more...

Compassionate and astute, [Chung's] writing has much to tell us about race, America, belonging, and adoption. Read more...

Compassionate and compelling. A memoir about understanding yourself as a daughter so that you may understand yourself as a mother.

A conversation with the writer Nicole Chung on a complicated question for adopted people: Who are my 'real parents'? Read more...

VOL 1 BROOKLYN features AYCEK "You might know Nicole Chung from her work as an editor at Catapult and, before that, The Toast; you might know her from acclaimed works of nonfiction that have appeared in numerous impressive publications. Now she's making her book-length debut with her memoir All You Can Ever Know, which explores questions of adoption, parenthood, race, and finding one's own voice as a writer."