Nicole Chung Libros

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 search to understand the lives her adoptive parents led, the life she forged as an adult, and the lives she's lost. In this country, unless you attain extraordinary wealth, you will likely be unable to help your loved ones in all the ways you'd hoped. You will learn to live with the specific, hollow guilt of those who leave hardship behind, yet are unable to bring anyone else with them. When Nicole Chung graduated from high school, she couldn't hightail it out of her overwhelmingly white Oregon hometown fast enough. As a scholarship student at a private university on the East Coast, no longer the only Korean she knew, she found a sense of community she had always craved as an Asian American adoptee - and a path to the life she'd long wanted. But the middle class world she begins to raise a family in - where there are big homes, college funds, nice vacations - looks very different from the middle class world she thought she grew up in, where paychecks have to stretch to the end of the week, health insurance is often lacking, and there are no safety nets. When her father dies at only sixty-seven, killed by diabetes and kidney disease, Nicole feels deep grief as well as rage, knowing that years of financial instability and lack of access to healthcare contributed to his premature death. And then the unthinkable happens - less than a year later, her beloved mother is diagnosed with cancer, and the physical distance between them becomes insurmountable as Covid descends upon the world. Exploring the enduring strength of family bonds in the face of hardship and tragedy, A Living Remedy examines what it takes to reconcile the distance between one life, one home, and another - and sheds needed light on some of the most persistent and tragic inequalities in American society"-- Provided by publisher

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.