All You Can Ever Know

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 severly 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 - she began to wonder if the story she'd been told was the whole truth. With warmth, candour 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.