Home › Books › A Living Remedy: A Memoir – A Daughter's Narrativ…
A Living Remedy: A Memoir – A Daughter's Narrative of Adoption, Class Inequality, and Grief in America
by
62/99
Critics' Rating Index
29/99
Readers' Rating Index
n/a
Scholars' Citation Index
94/99
Volume of Reviews
78/99
Volume of Reader Ratings
Sign in to add to your shelf, rate, or review this book.
About This Book
A searing memoir of family, class 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. 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 – 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 precarity and lack of access to healthcare 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. 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 grievous inequalities in American society.
Reviews
"In her clear, concise prose, Chung makes the personal political, tackling everything from America's crushingly unjust health care system to the country's gauzy assumptions about adoption, a practice that is itself rooted in economic inequality."
"Chung candidly brings readers into her life like they are old friends."
"For her, this is indeed a living remedy."
"Chung provides a rare record of the difficulty of supporting a parent through end-of-life care ..."
"It's not the poetic beauty of her language that distinguishes this memoir, but the accrued power of a story told in plain, direct sentences; a story that can feel overwhelmingly shameful to the adult child living through it."
"Powerfully rendered scenes illuminate this quiet polemic against a dysfunctional healthcare system, hidden poverty, and racism, though the narrative stumbles toward the end as Chung meanders through scattered reflections."
"A Living Remedy is most powerful when Chung frames the story of her parents' deaths as an unnecessary tragedy brought on by the broken health care system in this country."
"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."
"Chung's deeply personal story also highlights the shortcomings of health care in America ..."
"Chung's prose hones her grief into razor-sharp insights even as her words interrogate, honor, and celebrate the unbreakable bonds of parenthood."
Preview
Reader Reviews
0 reviewsSign in to write a review.
No reader reviews yet. Be the first!