A LIVING REMEDY

An adopted daughter finds herself robbed of the chance to give back to beloved parents.

Chung grew up in rural Oregon, the Korean daughter of White parents and one of the only Asians in her area, a situation she described in her poignant debut memoir, All You Can Ever Know. Her urge to confront troubling truths continues to drive her second book, which examines and expiates the vexing circumstances of her parents' deaths. After living "paycheck to paycheck" throughout her youth, her parents were out of work and without health insurance when her father's sudden, serious illness began. Death is no great equalizer, as the author soon learned: "Sickness and grief throw wealthy and poor families alike into upheaval, but they do not transcend the gulfs between us, as some claim—if anything, they often magnify them." Her father's death felt like "a kind of negligent homicide, facilitated and sped by the state’s failure to fulfill its most basic responsibilities to him and others like him." His passing came just before a change in Chung's own finances, as the manuscript of the memoir her father never finished reading was bought and published. Briefly, things looked brighter, as her bereaved mother planned a trip to Greece with friends from her church. Then, in quick succession, she was diagnosed with cancer, and Covid-19 arrived. Again, Chung's hands were tied, and she faced the cruel situation so many did during lockdown, unable to be present with dying relatives. Memoirs such as this one provide an important record of the emotional cost of the pandemic. Read in tandem with the author's first book, it underlines the strength of her connection to both her adoptive parents and the birth-family relatives she found.

As Chung seeks a way to grieve without self-punishment, this open-hearted, unflinching account will be a boon to others.