Nicole Chung was adopted by a white couple immediately after her birth and raised in a predominately white area of the country; in this book, she decides to go back and find her original Korean parents, about whom she knows nothing, and discover, perhaps, why they gave her up and whether she wants a connection with that original family. I have to say that memoir of this kind is not really in my wheelhouse; I tend to just dislike memoir as a genre because I think the majority of people, well, let’s just say the VAST majority of people, who write a memoir don’t actually have much to say and are below average in their writing abilities. Maybe you can say that about all genres, I don’t know; I feel like memoir is worse on average than most other genres. Anyway, all that said, this book is a genuine masterpiece. Chung is a magnificent writer. She’s able to discuss the racial & social issues surrounding adoption and cross-race adoption in particular, with sensitivity and ambivalence that feels earned, not manufactured. Even better, she’s able to really dig into her emotional journey and the emotional journeys of her adoptive parents and the family members she’s able to discover from her original family. Some of these passages feel almost novelistic in the way they really drill down to the raw heart of these characters. I mean, this is crazy to say, but I shed a tear or two reading this book. There are a couple of scenes in particular that just really got to me; in one, Chung talks to her adoptive mother about the fact that she is herself about to be a mother and she’s worried about what kind of mother she’ll be. Obviously, this leads into the themes of nature vs. nurture, but Chung doesn’t get clinical or philosophical; she takes us into her fear and uncertainty in a beautiful way. Anyway, this is a thought-provoking and emotionally draining book; Chung doesn’t have any easy answers and, well, she wouldn’t give them to us if she did, I don’t think. But what she does give us is a rich, ultimately incredibly rewarding emotional journey and this is right up there with the very best the memoir genre has ever given us. 4 stars.
tl;dr – Korean child is adopted by white parents and ultimately searches for her original family; it’s not the most unique story, but Chung is a fabulous writer and this is an emotional roller-coaster. 4 stars.