From early childhood, Nicole Chung heard the story of her adoption as a comforting, prepackaged myth. She believed that her Korean birth 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 trans-racial adoptee. But as she grew up, she wondered if the story she’d been told was the whole truth. In her book All You Can Ever Know, she asks: What does it mean to lose your roots—within your culture, within your family—and what happens when you find them?
Today, Nicole Chung joins us to talk about her book and about several recent topics covered in her I Have Notes newsletter from The Atlantic, including writing about trauma and grief.
Nicole Chung is the author of the national bestseller All You Can Ever Know. Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Time, Library Journal, and many other outlets, All You Can Ever Know was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, a semifinalist for the PEN Open Book Award, an Indies Choice Honor Book, and an official Junior Library Guild selection. Chung is a contributing writer and editor at The Atlantic, and her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Time, The Guardian, and Vulture, among others. In 2021, she was named to the Good Morning America AAPI Inspiration List honoring those "making Asian American history right now."
