{"id":129734,"date":"2018-10-02T11:00:06","date_gmt":"2018-10-02T15:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=129734"},"modified":"2018-10-02T10:49:09","modified_gmt":"2018-10-02T14:49:09","slug":"the-adoptees-perspective-an-interview-with-nicole-chung","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/10\/02\/the-adoptees-perspective-an-interview-with-nicole-chung\/","title":{"rendered":"The Adoptee\u2019s Perspective: An Interview with Nicole Chung"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Nicole Chung (photo: Erica B. Tappis)<\/p><\/div>\n

By the time I received Nicole Chung\u2019s proposal for <\/em>All You Can Ever Know on submission at Catapult, I was already\u2014like so many others\u2014a fan of her work. Her essays about identity and family in places like the <\/em>New York Times, Longreads, and The Toast had left a permanent groove in my imagination. When something happened in the news, I\u2019d wonder what Nicole thought about it. To read one of her articles was like diving into clear water after months of wading through flotsam: here was moral and stylistic clarity, and writing with purpose. Nicole\u2019s sentences have led me to a more nuanced understanding of what it means to be human. You can imagine how I felt when I learned our bid for her debut memoir had been accepted.<\/em><\/p>\n

Even as a proposal, <\/em>All You Can Ever Know had an urgency of intention that can take years to wrest from a manuscript. Nicole\u2019s voice is so distinct, she could write compellingly about pretty much anything. But in making the story of her transracial adoption and the search for her biological family her subject, she has done us all a great service. There are so few narratives of adoption from the adoptee\u2019s perspective. Despite having known many adopted people, I had never read or heard anything quite like Nicole\u2019s story before.<\/em><\/p>\n

After years of working together, Nicole and I sat down to have a formal conversation about her story, the evolution of her book, and what it means to both of us to be both writers and editors.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

I know that as a child you struggled to find stories that matched your experience of growing up adopted. Did this absence of comparable stories present a challenge for you as you worked on the book?<\/p>\n

CHUNG<\/p>\n

Yes\u2014people ask me for recommendations all the time, and it\u2019s difficult to know what to say, especially if they\u2019re looking for books that kids and teens could also read. The majority of the books that deal with adoption\u2014both fiction and nonfiction\u2014are written by non-adoptees. I don\u2019t think I read any adoption stories when I was growing up, except for Anne of Green Gables<\/em> and a few others from a different era, when adoption wasn\u2019t the institution it is today. I certainly never got to read anything about transracial adoptees like me.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

It must have been so strange to see versions of your story filtered through someone else\u2019s perspective, with the subject, the adoptee, never at the center.<\/p>\n

CHUNG<\/p>\n

It can also feel as though adopted people are never really allowed to grow up in literature. Even as adults, we might lack agency or be defined\u00a0primarily by what other<\/em> people think about adoption and our stories. Who we are is nearly always presented in terms of somebody else\u2019s wish, or somebody else\u2019s problem. We overwhelmingly have stories from the perspective of adopters, which makes adoption literature fairly one sided. And I know it\u2019s not because people aren\u2019t curious: I got so<\/em> many questions about adoption as a kid, and I still do. Many people, even if they aren\u2019t adopted, can relate to the feeling of not quite fitting in your family, or growing up between different cultures, or wondering about the relatives missing from the family reunion or the family album. And they are curious about what it\u2019s like for adopted people to grow up adopted; that\u2019s just not really what most of the books or shows are about.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Though this book is first and foremost a story of transracial adoption, the questions about identity, how to make sense of your story when you\u2019re missing a piece of your narrative, really resonated with me. I don\u2019t have a relationship with my biological father. In the book, there\u2019s a passage when you\u2019re in Seattle, visiting the city where you were born, and you talk about wondering if you walked by your parents in the crowd\u2014whether you\u2019d recognize each other. I remember feeling a similar thing, as a kid, in airports, wondering whether I\u2019d know my dad if he passed by. How did that feeling change when you actually searched\u2014did you feel a real shock of recognition when you began to learn about your birth family?<\/p>\n

CHUNG<\/p>\n

I did feel a real sense of recognition when I saw a picture of my sister, Cindy\u2014she sent it with her first email, so it was also the first time I read her words. I think that connection was almost immediate for both of us, and felt real even when we were just trading letters. At first the main thing we had in common was our curiosity\u2014what the hell happened in our family all those years ago?\u2014but it was a powerful place to begin. You know when you want something so much you almost bring it about through the wanting? I had always wanted to know other people like me, had fantasized about having a sister, and now here was my actual sister and I was talking to her.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

One of the most exciting things about working on this book was watching Cindy\u2019s story develop. When you started writing from her perspective, and even from that of your adoptive parents, it felt like you cracked something open, like you could write anything, come at this story from all sorts of different angles. How did writing from other points of view change the shape of the book for you?<\/p>\n

CHUNG<\/p>\n

My parents didn\u2019t feel real enough in the book until I gave them that chapter. You need to see who they were before the adoption, before I entered their lives at all; you have to understand how much they wanted to be parents, how much they wanted me<\/em>, in order to get so much of what happens after and why<\/em> my race didn\u2019t really matter to them. Obviously it matters deeply to me; it matters to the world; it never mattered all that much to them. Which isn\u2019t to say they were \u201crace blind,\u201d because no one is\u2014but where I was concerned, it was just so unimportant compared to how much they wanted a child. I think a lot of parents who adopt across racial lines feel similarly. You have to know how much my parents wanted the adoption in order to understand the stakes of my eventual search, why I hesitated for so many years.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

You really look at it through their eyes. It\u2019s such an essential thing for a writer to do.<\/p>\n

CHUNG<\/p>\n

I think that\u2019s the job of a memoirist; I don\u2019t think it\u2019s fair or right if I\u2019m the only character who\u2019s allowed that kind of depth and complexity. Nor would that be fun to read!<\/p>\n

I decided to try the same thing with Cindy, writing her story from her perspective. I knew I wanted to start with this story she had told me many times, about the day our mother went into labor with me and Cindy waited and waited and then her parents came home without a baby. She was only six at the time; she couldn\u2019t understand what was going on, and no one really explained it to her. I wanted to show where her curiosity came from, what the mystery was like from her side of it, growing up in my birth family.<\/p>\n

As an adoptee, it\u2019s so easy to let your mind go to that question of what your life would have been like if you\u2019d been kept, or just been adopted by someone else. In Cindy, I had one answer to that what-could-have-been question. Still, I wasn\u2019t sure it would work, writing someone else\u2019s point of view so intimately in a memoir.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an act of love to go there with your imagination, to try and understand someone else\u2019s story. But that can be a tricky balancing act for a memoirist. What were the challenges of writing into these scenes you weren\u2019t present for, and did doing that work influence your budding relationship with your sister in real life?<\/p>\n

CHUNG<\/p>\n

I asked her questions I hadn\u2019t thought to before, and learned more about her life and her young adulthood especially\u2014the years after she\u2019d left home but before we connected. Before I started writing, I promised her I wouldn\u2019t publish anything she didn\u2019t want me to share, and as the book took shape I checked in with her a lot. I was probably very annoying about it! I remember I was a little worried about writing her part of the story, though when you read the book you can see why it\u2019s so important. I didn\u2019t want her to feel exploited or exposed in any way. But our relationship is a decade old now, solid and built on a great deal of trust, and so I think in the end she just had faith that it would turn out okay.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

You were always loyal to the truth over embroidering anything for the sake of the story, which I don\u2019t think is the case in every memoir. The book has a kind of moral integrity that feels really rare.<\/p>\n

CHUNG<\/p>\n

Maybe at times I am too cautious, but when you are writing a memoir you really do feel this enormous pressure. It\u2019s not that I thought everyone needed to come out looking saintly. But I do have real compassion for everybody in the story, even some people who make objectively bad choices. People are complicated. We all make choices in order to survive.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Has writing the book changed how you feel about your adoption story, and what your role is as an adoptee in the world?<\/p>\n

CHUNG<\/p>\n

In the book, you know, I write about how I spent so many years explaining adoption to people. That explaining is part of what kept me from interrogating it myself.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

You had to be a \u201cgood adoptee.\u201d<\/p>\n

CHUNG<\/p>\n

Exactly. I had to represent my family. I was always managing people\u2019s questions and comments and expectations\u2014and dealing with racism, too. It was only natural to kind of have my hackles up, to feel that if I could just control the story, tell it convincingly, people would leave me alone. I, too, was trying to survive. But living away from home, in college and after, people didn\u2019t see me with my parents, and I didn\u2019t have to answer so many questions. There was no reason to talk about adoption unless I wanted to. I could have just left it all alone, stopped thinking about it, and I was almost surprised when I realized I didn\u2019t want to. Instead I searched for my birth family.<\/p>\n

And in writing about it, sometimes I feel, again, that weight of others\u2019 biases and expectations. I don\u2019t feel I am a voice for adoptees. I think rare misreadings of my work happen when people assume I am trying to speak for all adopted people or adoptive families, or making judgments about adoption as a whole. I think a good and worthy practice should be able to stand up to questions and criticism, but I wrote a memoir, not a piece of opinion writing with the goal of criticizing a whole institution.<\/p>\n

I am a little anxious about what will happen now that the book is out there, to tell you the truth. Of course, I don\u2019t know how widely it will be read and I don\u2019t know how it will be received, but I know it is one of very few adoptee memoirs out there, and there\u2019s a lot of pressure when you\u2019re one of a few. This is my life people will be reading and reviewing. At the same time, I know it\u2019s a piece of literature, and readers are going to react to it in ways I can\u2019t foresee or control.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

The book belongs to other people now.<\/p>\n

CHUNG<\/p>\n

It absolutely does, and that\u2019s a good thing. I know that needs to happen.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Your adoptive mother has read the whole book, and is supportive. But your adoptive father passed away just as we were wrapping up final edits on the manuscript, and though he read parts of what you\u2019d written, he never finished it. We had some difficult conversations about whether or not to add a section in the book addressing his death, and ultimately decided against it. Can you talk about that decision, and how you feel about it now?<\/p>\n

CHUNG<\/p>\n

I remember the deadline was the day after I found out. Everything from that day is a little blurry; I know I texted you, and you said not to worry about the deadline, of course, and then I think many hours after that I thought to write back and ask whether you thought I had to address this in the book. We decided not to because, first, it could have worked\u00a0only in some sort of afterword, as the events in the book wrap up about five years ago, not last year or this year. And I also just couldn\u2019t see how I would write about it, for publication in this book, when it had just happened. Including it would have meant reworking the ending and also postponing publication. I did eventually write about grief, adoption, and finishing the book in an essay<\/a> for Longreads. I think of that as a sort-of epilogue to my book, in a way.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

You\u2019re teaching this memoir-proposal class with Catapult now. Has that had any influence on how you think about the writing process, and especially what it means to distill a book-length idea into a proposal?<\/p>\n

CHUNG<\/p>\n

I wish I could tell aspiring memoirists that the size of your platform doesn\u2019t matter at all, and that brilliant books are going to sell just on the basis of the quality of the writing and the clarity of the story. It\u2019s hard to be the one pointing out that there are these structural, market-driven things that can make it hard to sell. It\u2019s not like it\u2019s impossible, I don\u2019t mean to sound discouraging\u2014books sell all the time!<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

But proposals can be tricky. As an editor, you have some awareness that what you get in the end might not be what\u2019s promised in the proposal. And that can be exhilarating, but also very nerve-racking. Sometimes all you\u2019re seeing is a couple of sample chapters and a chapter outline. So the question before making an offer becomes, Do I think the writer can do it? And the answer has to be yes. For me, and I think at Catapult generally, we\u2019re also asking whether we\u2019ve seen this story before. Or if we have read it, have we read it told in this way? From this perspective? In this style?<\/p>\n

CHUNG<\/p>\n

Exactly, and I think we like doing new things, but not every publisher wants to be the first to do something.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Not only are you an editor, we\u2019re also colleagues, though we weren\u2019t when I bought your book. And that\u2019s added a layer to this relationship. I bought your book, and less than a year later you started working for Catapult. I was a little nervous about how it would influence the editing process. Were you anxious about that? And what is it like working for the same company that\u2019s publishing your book?<\/p>\n

CHUNG<\/p>\n

I was a little anxious about it, but it was easy working with you from day one. I remember I felt kind of protective of the company\u2014I didn\u2019t want people to think it was doing something fishy by publishing my book!<\/p>\n

When you all were reading my proposal, I was still at The Toast<\/a>. I knew it\u2019d be closing. Didn\u2019t know what I\u2019d be doing after. I had that great call with you and Yuka [Igarashi, now editor in chief of Soft Skull Press<\/a>], and it was clear you just got<\/em> the book really well. I was never at all worried about working with you. It probably helped that our day jobs don\u2019t overlap\u2014you run the writing program, I run the magazine. And this is my first book, so it\u2019s not like I had all these other editing experiences to compare it with! I had no expectations, really; I was just really happy to be working with someone who was excited about the book and believed in it.<\/p>\n

And then I tried really hard to just stay far away from any <\/em>meetings about the book. Or any of our books. I have gone out of my way to keep my distance\u2014I figure I have the rest of my life to learn about book publishing; I don\u2019t want to know too much about the actual making of my own book. Come October, though, things will change! I’ll go to launch meetings and learn all about presales.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

I felt very protective of you as your editor. I knew a lot about publishing before my book came out, and I don\u2019t think that was always a good thing. Your job was to write the book. I didn\u2019t want you worrying about any of the other stuff. I was traveling a lot when I was editing your book and we had a close relationship. Sometimes I wondered whether I was too blunt.<\/p>\n

I mean, this is the thing about editing a memoir that\u2019s really interesting and different from fiction\u2014and maybe you feel like this about editing personal stories for the magazine. You\u2019re not just editing a text, you\u2019re helping somebody think about something that happened to them and put it in order and find the best way to bring the meaning forward.<\/p>\n

CHUNG<\/p>\n

Yeah. Writing is a job, it is labor, it is a vocation\u2014but at times writing a memoir absolutely feels like therapy. There\u2019s just no getting around it, because you are thinking so much about your history and your narrative and what it all means. You\u2019re taking events and memories and looking for the larger meaning, sometimes thinking, Do I really have to face the truth about this? You can try to compartmentalize\u2014and I am great <\/em>at that\u2014but there\u2019s no getting away from the fact that it is your life on the page, your identity that you\u2019re writing about. And you have to try and do it in a way that doesn\u2019t feel like puffing yourself up, or in a way that would be of no interest to anybody but you and your best friend. You can\u2019t go easy on yourself.<\/p>\n

And that is why it meant so much to me to get to write this with you, someone I absolutely trust. It would have been, I think, hard to have some of those conversations and talk through these events and be really vulnerable with someone I didn\u2019t feel close to. Or even someone I personally liked but who couldn\u2019t understand what I was trying to say.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

That\u2019s something that can be hard to explain about the author\/editor relationship. It can\u2019t just be like, \u201cI like this person.\u201d It really involves so much trust. I always trust that the writer knows more about the book than I do, and I see my job as helping them preserve their vision for the work. My editing background is really not traditional\u2014I essentially started editing when I began working at Catapult. What was your apprenticeship like? How did you learn to do it?<\/p>\n

CHUNG<\/p>\n

I learned to read critically and help shape a piece of writing in both college and graduate school. My first experience editing and publishing other writers online was a part-time volunteer editing gig at Hyphen<\/em><\/a>, a magazine dedicated to telling the stories of Asian America. I was there for about a year before Nicole Cliffe and Daniel Mallory Ortberg announced they were hiring an assistant editor for The Toast<\/a>. (I still can\u2019t believe I got that job\u2014I think I\u2019ve become a pretty good editor, but at the time, they were betting on sheer potential.) A few months later I was promoted to managing editor, and for two years, until the site closed, I edited most of the freelance pieces, managed the schedule, and made sure writers got paid.<\/p>\n

At a place like Catapult, every day is a workshop. Some of the most beautiful pieces we\u2019ve published came in as beautiful drafts, and we still did a round or more of edits\u2014because even in a great draft by a great writer, there are always some questions you have, some places where you want a little more. You\u2019re absolutely right that you learn to edit by being edited well, which always feels like such a gift to me, and by reading a lot. And I also think there\u2019s some element of \u201cjust do it\u201d in there\u2014you have to feel confident opening a piece and just diving in, asking your questions and making suggestions. Ideally it will be collaborative, more of a conversation with the writer than you exerting your will over the piece or changing their voice, but you also can\u2019t be timid.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve done such an amazing job building community as a writer and editor at The Toast and at Catapult, and on Twitter. What role has this community meant for you as a writer?<\/p>\n

CHUNG<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot I could say about Twitter and a lot of it isn\u2019t great, but I have found wonderful writers and friends who\u2019ve been just incredibly open and generous and thoughtful, who\u2019ve read and shared and challenged my work and helped me be better. And there\u2019s no paying that back, is the thing. But I can try to help other writers. It\u2019s a privilege to be able to edit and publish writers, and also just talk with them when they call or email and ask me about writing and editing and publishing as a career.<\/p>\n

As a writer, until you publish, you spend a lot of time sort of isolated with your thoughts and your feelings. I love that moment when you write the story and then you\u2019re not alone anymore. And other writers do the same for you. I just can\u2019t imagine doing this alone.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Julie Buntin\u2019s\u00a0debut novel, <\/em>Marlena, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle\u2019s John Leonard Prize.\u00a0Her writing has appeared in <\/em>The\u00a0Atlantic,<\/em>\u00a0Vogue,<\/em>\u00a0The New York Times Book Review,<\/em> Guernica,\u00a0and other publications. She is the director of writing programs and an associate editor at <\/em>Catapult.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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