Hosted by Brookline Booksmith in partnership with Another Story Bookshop.
The Transnational Literature Series welcomes Korean adoptees Nicole Chung and Jenny Heijun Wills in Conversation with Mee-ok to discuss identity, belonging, adoption—and writing their stories. This event takes place virtually on Thursday, July 24th at 8:00 pm ET.
Books featured in this conversation:
All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir by Nicole Chung
Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related: A Memoir by Jenny Heijun Wills
Or if you’d like to purchase from Another Story Bookshop (Toronto, CA):
All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir by Nicole Chung
Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related: A Memoir by Jenny Heijun Wills
With warmth, candor, and startling insight, Nicole Chung tells of her search for the people who gave her up, which coincided with the birth of her own child. All You Can Ever Know is a profound, moving chronicle of surprising connections and the repercussions of unearthing painful family secrets—vital reading for anyone who has ever struggled to figure out where they belong.
Nicole Chung was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest and currently lives in the Washington, DC area. Her nationally bestselling debut memoir All You Can Ever Know was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography, longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award, and named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, NPR, TIME, Newsday, Library Journal, BuzzFeed, Goodreads, and Chicago Public Library, among many others. She is the editor in chief of Catapult magazine, co-editor of the immigration anthology A Map Is Only One Story, and the former managing editor of The Toast. Her next book is forthcoming from Ecco Books/HarperCollins.
In her beautiful and haunting memoir of kinship and culture rediscovered, Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related Jenny Heijun Wills recounts the story of reconnecting with her first family in Korea while living at a guesthouse for transnational adoptees. Delving into gender, class, racial, and ethnic complexities, as well as into the complex relationships between Korean women—sisters, mothers and daughters, grandmothers and grandchildren, aunts and nieces—Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related. describes in visceral, lyrical prose the painful ripple effects that follow a child’s removal from a family, and the rewards that can flow from both struggle and forgiveness.
Jenny Heijun Wills is the author of Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related: A Memoir, which has received much acclaim, including being one of the Globe & Mail’s top 100 books of 2019, one of the Winnipeg Free Press’s 10 best books of the last decade, and winning the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust award for Non-Fiction in 2019 and the 2020 Best First Book by the Manitoba Book Awards. She has lived, studied, and worked in Montreal, Boston, Toronto, and Seoul. She teaches in the Department of English at the University of Winnipeg.
About the moderator:
Mee-ok is the winner of the 2019 Construction Literary Magazine Contest for Nonfiction and was selected as a finalist for the 2019 Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction. She has also been featured in the LA Times, Boston Globe Magazine, American Journal of Poetry, Korean Quarterly, and Michael Pollan’s anthology for Medium, where her piece was named Editor’s Pick. She is currently a contributing editor at Passengers Journal and the recipient of the 2021 Voices of Color Fellowship at the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing as well as a visiting lecturer at the Frank Lloyd Wright estate, Taliesin, where she is a former Writer in Residence. More at Mee-ok.com
The Transnational Literature Series
The Transnational Series focuses on stories of migration, the intersection of politics & literature, and works in translation. Subscribe to the Transnational Series newsletter for information on upcoming events, book recommendations, and more.
About Another Story
Located in the West end of Toronto, Another Story Bookshop sells a broad range of literature for children, young adults and adults with a focus on themes of social justice, equity, and diversity. They are a proudly independent bookstore with 30 years of history and a commitment to providing quality customer service.
About donations
Registration for this event is free, but you are welcome to pay your way in. You can also support the authors and bookstores by purchasing copies of the featured books.
