All You Can Ever Know (Chung) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
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.
Bethanne Patrick - Washington Post


A Korean American adopted by white parents in Oregon, Chung writes movingly of her search to find her birth parents; her personal quest leads not only to her own story, but also to meditations on race, parenthood, and the construction of identity.
Kate Tuttle - Boston Globe


What gives All You Can Ever Know its power is the emotional honesty in every line, essential to the telling of a story so personal.… All You Can Ever Know, sometimes painfully and always beautifully, explores what it means to be adopted, to be a different race from the family you grew up in, and to later create a family of your own.
Seattle Times
 

In this much-anticipated memoir, Chung brings her clear and thoughtful prose to the task of untangling the legacy of her adoption to white parents in Oregon. Transracial adoption …looks far more complicated under Chung’s kind but implacably honest gaze.
Huffington Post


(Starred review) [A] stunning memoir.… Chung’s writing is vibrant and provocative as she explores her complicated feelings about her transracial adoption (which she "loved and hated in equal measure") and the importance of knowing where one comes from.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) This touching memoir explores issues of identity, racism, motherhood, and sisterhood with eloquence and grace. Highly recommended.
Library Journal


[An] insightful memoir.… Chung's clear, direct approach to her experience, which includes the birth of her daughter as well as her investigation of her family, reveals her sharp intelligence and willingness to examine difficult emotions.
Booklist


Highly compelling… [and 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."
Kirkus Reviews