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Nicole Chung

Goodreads Author

Born

The United States

Website

http://www.nicolechung.net

Twitter

nicolesjchung

Member Since

June 2016

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Nicole Chung is the author of A Living Remedy (April 4, 2023) and the national bestseller All You Can Ever Know (2018). Named a Best Book of the Year by over twenty outlets, including NPR, The Washington Post, Time, and Library Journal, All You Can Ever Know was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and NAIBA Book of the Year, a semifinalist for the PEN Open Book Award, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and an Indies Choice Honor Book. Nicole is currently a contributing writer at The Atlantic, and her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Time, The Guardian, Slate, and Vulture. Find her on Twitter, Mastodon, and Post at @nicolesjchung.

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What’s the best thing about being a writer?

Nicole Chung Finding community. I love that moment when you share your story and you aren't alone anymore. It's been so fun to hear from, meet, and talk with reade…moreFinding community. I love that moment when you share your story and you aren't alone anymore. It's been so fun to hear from, meet, and talk with readers!(less)

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You’ve written elsewhere about your transracial adoption, but at what point did you realize you wanted to write a book about it?

Nicole Chung This answer changes every time—which I guess is its own answer, in a way: I clearly do not remember a particular day or moment or month when I made th…moreThis answer changes every time—which I guess is its own answer, in a way: I clearly do not remember a particular day or moment or month when I made the decision. I had written a few essays about adoption, and gotten a lot of interesting feedback and questions from readers, many of whom told me they hadn't read a transracial adoptee's perspective on adoption before. It surprised me because I had come across these narratives, but it's true that adoptee perspectives hadn't—maybe still haven't—gone "mainstream" in the way they really should.

Eventually it became clear that I couldn't do justice to the issue, to the story, to every person involved, to every complication and nuance, writing 1000- and 2000-word essays here and there. A book would allow me to lay everything out, tell the full story, but I also hoped it would have a kind of impact on the culture—maybe help start some conversations, help keep them going—that a short-form piece wouldn't or couldn't. Also, from a purely selfish standpoint: I felt as though this book would be there, tapping me on the shoulder, until I tried to write it. It was almost as if I had to try to make some kind of place for myself in a literary landscape where people like me and experiences like mine were and are scarce. Which is maybe a burden I should not have felt, and not every writer of color or adoptee of color would or should feel that way, but I did.(less)

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Nicole Chung’s books

Average rating: 3.9 · 35,960 ratings · 4,556 reviews · 7 distinct works • Similar authors

	All You Can Ever Know 3.85 avg rating — 26,393 ratings — published 2018 — 19 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Living Remedy: A Memoir 3.99 avg rating — 5,993 ratings — published 2023	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump's America by Samhita Mukhopadhyay (Editor), Kate Harding (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Carina Chocano (Goodreads Author) (Contributor) 4.11 avg rating — 2,037 ratings — published 2017 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Map Is Only One Story: Twenty Writers on Immigration, Family, and the Meaning of Home by Nicole Chung (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Mensah Demary (Editor) 4.03 avg rating — 1,140 ratings — published 2020 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	When We Become Ours: A YA Adoptee Anthology by Shannon Gibney, Nicole Chung (Goodreads Author), Mariama J. Lockington (Goodreads Author) 4.17 avg rating — 278 ratings — published 2023 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Body Language: Writers on Identity, Physicality, and Making Space for Ourselves by Nicole Chung (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Matt Ortile (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Nina Riggs (Contributor) 4.02 avg rating — 270 ratings — published 2022 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Living Remedy: A Memoir; Library Edition by Nicole Chung (Goodreads Author), Unknown Author 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Nicole Chung…

Need another excuse to treat yourself to a new book this week? We've got you covered with the buzziest new releases of the day, according to early...

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The Water Dancer

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

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Nov 21, 2019 07:53AM

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Becoming

by Michelle Obama (Goodreads Author)

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Nov 16, 2018 05:19PM

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Hole in the Middle

by Kendra Fortmeyer (Goodreads Author)

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Jul 18, 2018 06:37PM

Quotes by Nicole Chung (?)

“To be a hero, I thought, you had to be beautiful and adored. To be beautiful and adored, you had to be white. That there were millions of Asian girls like me out there in the world, starring in their own dramas large and small, had not yet occurred to me, as I had neither lived nor seen it.”
― Nicole Chung, All You Can Ever Know

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“As my thoughts reached out to them, all at once I could envision hundreds of gossamer-thin threads of history and love, curiosity and memory, built up slowly across the time and space between us—a web of connections too delicate to be seen or touched, too strong to be completely severed.”
― Nicole Chung, All You Can Ever Know

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“I finally understood what my birth parents did not: my adoption was hard, and complicated, but it was not a tragedy. It was not my fault, and it wasn’t theirs, either. It was the easiest way to solve just one of too many problems.”
― Nicole Chung, All You Can Ever Know

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Polls

What should our April group read be? (Debut works)

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

13 votes 27.7%

She Would Be King by Wayetu Moore

10 votes 21.3%

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

8 votes 17.0%

All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir by Nicole Chung

5 votes 10.6%

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

4 votes 8.5%

Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson

4 votes 8.5%

White Chrysanthemum by Mary Lynn Bracht

2 votes 4.3%

The Dry by Jane Harper

1 vote 2.1%

47 total votes

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Nicole Chung’s Followers (962)

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Nicole Chung

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