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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Nicole characterize her relationship with being Korean?

2. When did Washington state place adoption records in the public record?

3. What was the doctors’ prognosis for Nicole as a baby?

4. What does Nicole say her mind was fixated on, after her first prenatal visit?

5. When does Nicole say her parents’ story began?

Short Essay Questions

1. What kind of relationship did Nicole think she would have with her birth family, before she started searching?

2. Why did pregnancy lead Nicole to inquire into her birth family?

3. What does Nicole say substituted for the Korean culture she lost?

4. What is the story Nicole Chung says she was told about her adoption?

5. What does Nicole tell of her adoptive parents’ story?

6. What did Nicole find when she started to snoop around looking for clues about her adoption?

7. How did Nicole feel about opening the question of her birth family?

8. What assurance did Nicole and Dan receive from Brenda?

9. What ruse does Nicole employ when telling her mother that she is looking for her birth family?

10. What does the title of the memoir refer to?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What does All You Can Ever Know tell us about being Korean, generally? What does it tell us about being American? What kind of belonging is possible through national identity? What are the trappings of that identity? What does being white mean to Nicole?

Essay Topic 2

Would you recommend All You Can Ever Know? For what purposes would you recommend All You Can Ever Know, and what kinds of readers would you recommend it for? What other book would you recommend that would cover the same material or tell the same story in a different way?

Essay Topic 3

Evaluate All You Can Ever Know as a bildungsroman, a coming-of-age narrative. What are the challenges Nicole faces in rites of passage in this memoir? How does she overcome these challenges, and what does she learn at each stage? What kind of person is she at the end?

(see the answer keys)

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