A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung

This is an interesting memoir that explores the nature of family, grief, mourning, and memory. The author is a Korean-American who is given up by her birth parents and adopted by a white couple who live in southern Oregon, where she looks very different from everyone else. In her 30s, she was hit hard by loss: Both of her adoptive parents died within two years of each other, both of their deaths were complicated by a lack of health insurance and therefore a lack of access to health care. So in addition to the usual tropes on the meaning of home and family, she explores this difficult emotional terrain while also delivering a powerful social commentary that poses vital questions about access to medical care. The other thread is that of how one lives on. The loss of her parents drives home the idea that this is the end of their bloodline, because they have no biological children, and Chung’s own children are biologically connected to the birth parents who gave her up for adoption. She does find a biological sister, and they form a support network, but the idea that the people who raised her do not win in the genetic lottery, but the people who abandoned her do. It is a thoughtful memoir.