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A review by shimauchiha
All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung
3.0
Read this if you're interested in:
-Transracial adoptions
-Searching for birth parents
-Short books that feel like a long personal essay
My thoughts:
This book is a perfectly fine story of the (Korean) author's adoption into a white family and her decision to search for and connect with her birth family when she is in her late twenties and having her own child. It's written in a very straightforward, almost conversational tone. Unlike what the narrative often implied, I didn't find it to be a particularly new narrative of adoption. If you've ever read anything on the subject as written by adoptees, you're likely to find a lot of similar ideas in this book. I found it very easy to read, however, I was not too emotionally invested or involved in the story. Often, I found the author to pull away from some of the more personal or emotionally challenging aspects of the story, which is well within her rights, but not my personal preference when reading memoirs. Overall, I'd give it 3.5 stars.
I'd recommend this if you kind of felt like reading a memoir/non-fiction but wanted it to be short and relatively easy to read.
-Transracial adoptions
-Searching for birth parents
-Short books that feel like a long personal essay
My thoughts:
This book is a perfectly fine story of the (Korean) author's adoption into a white family and her decision to search for and connect with her birth family when she is in her late twenties and having her own child. It's written in a very straightforward, almost conversational tone. Unlike what the narrative often implied, I didn't find it to be a particularly new narrative of adoption. If you've ever read anything on the subject as written by adoptees, you're likely to find a lot of similar ideas in this book. I found it very easy to read, however, I was not too emotionally invested or involved in the story. Often, I found the author to pull away from some of the more personal or emotionally challenging aspects of the story, which is well within her rights, but not my personal preference when reading memoirs. Overall, I'd give it 3.5 stars.
I'd recommend this if you kind of felt like reading a memoir/non-fiction but wanted it to be short and relatively easy to read.