Editorial Content for A Living Remedy: A Memoir
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
Nicole Chung’s debut memoir, ALL YOU CAN EVER KNOW, explored her determination to better understand her adoption and locate her Korean birth family. In her latest book, A LIVING REMEDY, she looks with grace and grit at her upbringing in Oregon and how her American parents’ ideals, ethics and sincerity affected her as she matured and gained a new, occasionally painful perspective on her past.
"Chung's frank, emotive chronicle will touch those who have experienced such child-parent affection, distance and reunion, and those who may see a similar scenario looming."
Raised by a couple whose finances were always unstable (though she didn’t fully grasp it at the time), Chung, a Korean whose frailty at birth resulted in the necessity for adoption, became a notably bright student who was able to go to college on scholarships. Secretly she had been dreaming of leaving the very staid, white corner of Oregon for a place where a more adventurous, varied lifestyle might be attainable.
Three years later, Chung married Dan while both were working and studying in the DC area. Despite caring for her two daughters and working diligently as a writer, she maintained close contact with her parents. When she found out that her father was ill and slowly getting worse with numerous complications, including kidney failure, Chung spent time in Oregon as often as she could, helping to sort out legal, expense and insurance issues. She learned from his passing that “grief comes in waves.” That drew her ever closer to her mother, whose affection she would always cherish. But after a year, her mother also showed signs of critical illness.
Navigating through these trials led Chung to see that America’s health care system has many weak points that particularly affect those with lower income. Her sacrifices on behalf of both parents --- and theirs for her --- form the nexus of this poignant portrait of challenge, loss, sorrow and the power of memory.
Chung, whose writing is widely heralded and appears in such highly respected publications as the New York Times, the Atlantic, Time and the Guardian, brings to this account a sense of the particularity of love --- the many small ways that it can manifest, evoke new feelings and stimulate lasting memories. Honoring the pair who adopted her, she depicts the failings, near-misses and renewed determination that even the smallest loving encounters can elicit. Chung's frank, emotive chronicle will touch those who have experienced such child-parent affection, distance and reunion, and those who may see a similar scenario looming.
Teaser
Nicole Chung couldn’t hightail it out of her overwhelmingly white Oregon hometown fast enough. As a scholarship student at a private university on the East Coast, no longer the only Korean she knew, she found community and a path to the life she'd long wanted. But the middle class world she begins to raise a family in looks very different from the middle class world she thought she grew up in. When her father dies at only 67, killed by diabetes and kidney disease, Nicole feels deep grief as well as rage, knowing that years of precarity and lack of access to health care contributed to his early death. And then the unthinkable happens. Less than a year later, her beloved mother is diagnosed with cancer, and the physical distance between them becomes insurmountable as COVID-19 descends upon the world.
Promo
Nicole Chung couldn’t hightail it out of her overwhelmingly white Oregon hometown fast enough. As a scholarship student at a private university on the East Coast, no longer the only Korean she knew, she found community and a path to the life she'd long wanted. But the middle class world she begins to raise a family in looks very different from the middle class world she thought she grew up in. When her father dies at only 67, killed by diabetes and kidney disease, Nicole feels deep grief as well as rage, knowing that years of precarity and lack of access to health care contributed to his early death. And then the unthinkable happens. Less than a year later, her beloved mother is diagnosed with cancer, and the physical distance between them becomes insurmountable as COVID-19 descends upon the world.
About the Book
From the bestselling author of ALL YOU CAN EVER KNOW comes a searing memoir of class, inequality and grief --- a daughter’s search to understand the lives her adoptive parents led, the life she forged as an adult and the lives she’s lost.
In this country, unless you attain extraordinary wealth, you will likely be unable to help your loved ones in all the ways you’d once hoped. You will learn to live with the specific, hollow guilt of those who leave hardship behind, yet are unable to bring anyone else with them.
When Nicole Chung graduated from high school, she couldn’t hightail it out of her overwhelmingly white Oregon hometown fast enough. As a scholarship student at a private university on the East Coast and no longer the only Korean she knew, she found a sense of community she had always craved as an Asian American adoptee --- and a path to the life she’d long wanted.
But the middle-class world she begins to raise a family in --- where there are big homes and college funds --- looks very different from the middle-class world she thought she grew up in, where paychecks have to stretch to the end of the week and there are no safety nets. When her father dies at only 67, killed by the kidney disease that took the life of his mother before him, Nicole feels deep grief as well as rage, knowing that years of financial instability and lack of access to health care contributed to his premature death. And then the unthinkable happens. Less than a year later, her beloved mother is diagnosed with cancer, and the physical distance between them becomes insurmountable as COVID descends upon the world.
Exploring the enduring strength of family bonds in the face of hardship and tragedy, A LIVING REMEDY examines what it takes to reconcile the distance between one life, one home and another --- and sheds needed light on some of the most persistent and tragic inequalities in American society.
Audiobook available, read by Jennifer Kim
