39 pages • 1 hour read
Nicole ChungAll You Can Ever Know: A Memoir
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Books and Writing
Books and writing are recurring motifs in Nicole’s memoir that relate to escapism and family. Nicole felt isolated growing up in a white household. She not only looked different from her parents, but also from her extended family and larger community. Some of Nicole’s classmates bullied her for being Korean and being adopted. Her adoptive parents told her to ignore the taunts, but they become more frequent over time. Lonely and creative, Nicole sought refuge in reading and writing: “I was isolating myself more and more at school, retreating to the library as often as possible […] I’d always been a bookish child” (43).
Nicole’s interest in writing grew over time, and throughout the memoir her changing use of her writing reflects her changing relationship with her Korean identity. She went from writing stories with white protagonists to creating diverse characters with heroic capabilities. As an adult, she began writing essays about adoption, family, gender, the media, and the search for her birth family.
Most important of all, after reuniting with her birth family, Nicole realized that writing was a family trait. Her birth father was a published author and a scholar of Korean literature and linguistics. Similarly, Cindy wrote poetry and short stories in her spare time. During their first meeting, Nicole’s birth father gave her a book of his essays written in Korean. In return, Nicole sent him a piece she wrote about her decision to search for her birth family. Nicole’s father read the essay and responded kindly: “He told me I took after him in my writing. He told me, again, that he was proud of me” (254). Books and writing thus gradually evolve from a motif centered upon escapism into a source of connection and healing.
Shared Family Traits
Shared family traits symbolize belonging in Nicole’s memoir. Throughout her childhood, Nicole wished she looked like her adoptive parents. Her adoptive father went gray prematurely, while her adoptive mother sported a reddish-brown perm that contrasted starkly with Nicole’s straight black hair. Her mother’s skin was pale and freckled, while hers was light brown. These physical differences reminded Nicole that she was adopted and fueled her feelings of isolation and alienation.
By contrast, Nicole recognized herself instantly in her birth family. This sense of belonging was particularly strong when she saw pictures of Cindy: “I could see we were alike […] As Dan pointed out, no one who saw us together would doubt we were sisters” (163). Nicole spent her whole life wishing for people who looked like her and who understood her. She found such a person in Cindy: “Our eyes, I saw up close, looked to be about the same hue […] From a distance [her hair] would appear the same color” (212). Abigail seemed to respond to the similarities between her mother and aunt: “Usually it took our daughter several hours if not days to warm up to new people […] Yet she hesitated only seconds before plopping down next to Cindy” (213).
Just as Nicole recognized herself in Cindy, she felt a strong connection to her birth father. Their shared family traits were not physical, but intellectual. Like her birth father, Nicole had an aptitude for writing and made writing her profession. She learned during their first meeting that many of her ancestors were also writers. She came to see her lifelong interest in writing as “a shared family trait” (243), an inheritance that went back generations. This knowledge filled Nicole with a sense of belonging, but the feeling was tinged with poignancy. In recognizing and celebrating shared family traits between herself and her birth family, Nicole is able to feel more connected to both her family and her Korean identity.
The Korean Language
The Korean language is a symbol of both alienation and belonging in Nicole’s memoir. Nicole’s adoptive parents did not put her in Korean language classes, nor did they teach her about Korean culture. In college, when she first lived among large numbers of Asian people, Nicole understood just how cut off she was from her roots, in part because she did not know Korean. Some of her classmates commented on how little she knew about her heritage. Nicole’s Korean American roommate, for example, referred to her as “banana,” a pejorative used to describe Asian Americans who have assimilated into mainstream American culture. Nicole had no defense and was too embarrassed to rectify the problem: “I had briefly considered enrolling in a Korean course, until I realized most of the other students were Koreans looking to ‘brush up’—I could not imagine anything that would make me feel like more of an imposter” (275).
Only after reuniting with her birth family did Nicole finally start learning Korean. She realized she felt embarrassed when she could not talk with her birth relatives in Korean or read her birth father’s writing. Learning Korean was an important step in reconnecting with her culture, and in turn, helping her daughters do the same: “If a stranger could become my sister—surely I could find a way to regain at least some part of my heritage, my cultural birthright, and pass on that knowledge and sense of belonging to my daughters” (277).
One of Nicole’s first experiences in learning Korean is learning how to write her original Korean name in Hangul, a moment of great symbolic importance in terms of her taking ownership of her Korean identity. Toward the close of the memoir, Nicole mentions that her own daughter Abigail began to show an interest in Korean upon discovering her workbook of Korean practice. Through knowledge of the Korean language, both Nicole and her daughters can feel closer to their roots, thereby transforming the Korean language from a barrier separating them from their identity into a bridge uniting the American and Korean sides of themselves.
