Catapult asked Nicole Chung:

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 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.

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