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A Living Remedy: A Memoir (2023)

by Nicole Chung

Other authors: See the other authors section.

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
1534180,240 (3.78)9
"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 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, 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, college funds, nice vacations - 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, health insurance is often lacking, and there are no safety nets. When her father dies at only sixty-seven, killed by diabetes and kidney disease, Nicole feels deep grief as well as rage, knowing that years of financial instability and lack of access to healthcare 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"--… (more)
Asia (106)
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» See also 9 mentions

Showing 3 of 3
In this memoir Chung describes how her father died from diabetes and kidney disease at age 67; after years of struggling without adequate health care due to poor insurance coverage, and then a few years later, during COVID, her mother died of cancer. Her parents lived in Southern Oregon. Chung was living in DC, with her young family, and not able to be as present and helpful for her parents as she wanted. She describes her grief, her guilt and also her deep love for her parents, especially her mother. ( )
  banjo123 | Nov 18, 2023 |
A memoir about the deaths of both her adoptive parents a short time apart - her mother's during COVID - and the way the American public health system fails people.

Quotes

I couldn't comprehend what it would mean to attain that first foothold in a world they would be unable to follow me into. (20)

As an adoptee, I had long known what it was to be considered lucky, and to be expected to be thankful for it. (20)

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. (21)

This is a country....that first abandons and then condemns people without money who have the temerity to get sick, accusing them of causing their own deaths. (79)

I've never doubted their love, but sometimes I have wondered if my adoption added just a little more anxious weight to our disagreements and disparities, made us all feel a little less secure, if some hard and often unspeakable way. (103)

We were so far beyond anything my mother might have wanted. (148)

Loss in this time of distancing and isolation can feel like skirting the borders of a deep, dense forest that is still largely unknown and unexplored; if it hurts this much now, at the edge of the woods, I wonder what will happen if I am ever able to venture in. (178)

"Always make forgiveness part of your farewell." (230) ( )
  JennyArch | Jun 5, 2023 |
*Free e-book ARC received from the publisher through Edelweiss Plus - thank you!*

Nicole Chung was more than ready to leave her small town in Oregon behind when she went to college, and she did just that: moving across the country, going to school, meeting her husband, and leaving her adoptive parents behind.

The first memoir, All You Can Ever Know, focuses on Nicole's experience growing up a Korean American daughter of a white family that never brought up race and her journey to reconnect with her birth family. This one shifts to her her loving relationships with those very parents, and the grief she went through as they decline and she can't be the daughter she wants to be for them. Her reflections on that experience are raw and self-aware, heartbreaking to read whether or not you've had a similar grieving experience or not. ( )
  bell7 | Feb 22, 2023 |
Showing 3 of 3
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» Add other authors (2 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Nicole Chungprimary authorall editionscalculated
Rowe, Vivian LopezCover designersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Epigraph
I don't know if I'll ever go home again.
I don't know who I've seen for the last time.
—-SAFIA ELHILLO, “For My Friends, in Reply to a Question”
What it must be like to be an angel
or a squirrel, we can imagine sooner.
—-WILLIAM MEREDITH, “Parents”
… because even grief provides a living remedy
—-MARIE HOWE, “For Three Days”
Dedication
For my parents
First words
I can picture her, one pale, freckled cheek resting on the yellow floral-patterned pillowcase next to mine, warm brown eyes half-lidded with sleep as she listened to me talk.
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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"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 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, 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, college funds, nice vacations - 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, health insurance is often lacking, and there are no safety nets. When her father dies at only sixty-seven, killed by diabetes and kidney disease, Nicole feels deep grief as well as rage, knowing that years of financial instability and lack of access to healthcare 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"--

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