All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir

All You Can Ever Know is a 2018 memoir by Nicole Chung, a Korean American writer whose articles have appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Guardian, and other media outlets. Divided into four parts and following two timelines—one focusing on Nicole’s childhood and the other on her adult life—All You Can Ever Know recounts Nicole’s experiences being adopted by a white Catholic couple and her journey to reuniting with her Korean birth family. Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Time, and NPR, among others, All You Can Ever Know was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, a semifinalist for the PEN Open Book Award, and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. 

This guide uses the 2018 edition published by Catapult.

Content Warning: The source material includes racial slurs, which are described in this guide only in direct quotes of the source material.

Summary

All You Can Ever Know is divided into four parts, each representing distinct stages in the author’s life. Part 1 focuses on Nicole’s childhood and formative years through college. Shifting between her post-college life working at an adoption organization and her childhood memories, Nicole describes her parents’ relationship, their struggles with infertility, the circumstances of her adoption, and her upbringing in a predominantly white Oregonian town in the 1980s and 1990s.