Margins
All You Can Ever Know book cover
All You Can Ever Know
A Memoir
2018
First Published
3.85
Average Rating
252
Number of Pages

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 early 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 hopes of giving her a better life; that forever feeling slightly out of place was simply her fate as a transracial adoptee. But as she grew up—facing prejudice her adoptive family couldn’t see, finding her identity as an Asian American and 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, 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. Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography / Longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award / Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, NPR, The Boston Globe, TIME, Newsday, Library Journal, BuzzFeed, Real Simple, Paste Magazine, Chicago Public Library, Seattle Public Library, Goodreads, Shelf Awareness, Electric Literature, and more

Avg Rating
3.85
Number of Ratings
25,607
5 STARS
24%
4 STARS
44%
3 STARS
27%
2 STARS
5%
1 STARS
1%
goodreads

Author

Nicole Chung
Author · 3 books
Nicole Chung is the author of A Living Remedy (April 4, 2023) and the national bestseller All You Can Ever Know (2018). Named a Best Book of the Year by over twenty outlets, including NPR, The Washington Post, Time, and Library Journal, 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 Discover Great New Writers selection, and an Indies Choice Honor Book. Nicole is currently a contributing writer at The Atlantic, and her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Time, The Guardian, Slate, and Vulture. Find her on Twitter, Mastodon, and Post at @nicolesjchung.
548 Market St PMB 65688, San Francisco California 94104-5401 USA
© 2025 Paratext Inc. All rights reserved