Nicole Chung verfasst fesselnde Prosa, die sich mit Themen wie Identität, Familie und der Suche nach Zugehörigkeit auseinandersetzt. Ihr Schreiben zeichnet sich durch tiefe Introspektion und eine ehrliche Erkundung komplexer zwischenmenschlicher Beziehungen aus. In ihren Essays, die in führenden literarischen und Nachrichtenmedien veröffentlicht wurden, untersucht Chung oft Erfahrungen von Adoption und kultureller Integration. Ihre Arbeit bietet den Lesern aufschlussreiche Perspektiven auf das universelle menschliche Verlangen nach Verbindung und Verständnis.
Exploring themes of class and inequality, this memoir delves into the author's journey as an Asian American adoptee navigating grief and familial bonds. After leaving her struggling hometown for a scholarship at a prestigious university, she confronts the stark contrast between her past and the middle-class life she builds. The premature deaths of her parents due to health issues exacerbated by financial instability lead her to reflect on the harsh realities of American society. The narrative emphasizes the struggle to reconcile different life experiences while highlighting systemic inequalities.
This anthology of essays from Catapult magazine explores the narratives our bodies convey and how we navigate the expectations surrounding race, gender, health, and ability. It presents bodies as complex entities—serious yet irreverent, fragile yet strong—deeply intertwined with our identities. The collection confronts monolithic myths and engages in nuanced discussions on weight, disability, desire, fertility, illness, and the embodied experience of race. Featuring thirty diverse writers, the essays challenge societal norms about how bodies should look and function, offering personal truths from various perspectives of race, age, gender, size, sexuality, health, ability, geography, and class. Topics range from art modeling as a Black woman to the harsh memories of high school sports, and from the upheaval of cancer diagnoses to the unexpected moments of intimacy during grief. This intelligent and candid collection showcases personal narratives that reflect our multifaceted understanding of our bodies, highlighting the experiences of writers at different stages in their careers. Each essay contributes to a broader conversation about the human experience, emphasizing the complexity and individuality of bodily narratives.
From the bestselling author of ALL YOU CAN EVER KNOW comes a searing memoir of class, inequality, and grief—a daughter's quest to understand her adoptive parents' lives, her own journey, and the losses she has faced. In America, unless you achieve extraordinary wealth, helping loved ones as you hoped often remains out of reach. This memoir captures the hollow guilt of those who escape hardship but cannot bring others along. After graduating high school, Nicole Chung eagerly left her overwhelmingly white Oregon hometown for a private university on the East Coast, where she finally found the community she longed for as an Asian American adoptee. However, the middle-class life she begins to build for her family starkly contrasts with her upbringing, where financial struggles were the norm and safety nets were nonexistent. The death of her father at sixty-seven, due to diabetes and kidney disease, fills her with grief and anger, as she recognizes the role of financial instability and inadequate healthcare in his early demise. Tragically, less than a year later, her mother is diagnosed with cancer, and the distance between them grows insurmountable amid the Covid pandemic. Through exploring family bonds amidst hardship, this memoir sheds light on persistent inequalities in American society.
A NATIONAL BESTSELLER 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) 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.
