Review of A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung

“How do you learn to cherish yourself, your life, when grief has made it unrecognizable? I am starting to feel that we do so not by trying to fill a void that can never be filled but by living as best as we can in this strange, yawning terrain our loved ones have left behind, exploring its jagged boundaries and learning to see it as something new.”

— Nicole Chung

There are some books I have a tendency to see all over my social media feed because I follow certain authors, and A Living Remedy was indeed one of those books. I saw a ton of authors I was following posting about it throughout the past couple of weeks leading up to me checking it out at the library, and I did have to wait a bit before actually receiving my copy.

It seems like everyone else in the area had heard about the book too, and if this were a couple of months ago, I would have chalked it up to the 2020/2021 publishing trend where it was mainly half white Asian-American women writing about their mothers dying.

This fits the bill of that trend, but it’s come out quite a bit later than Crying in H Mart or Tastes Like War—it’s now 2023. I’m drawn to these kinds of memoirs about grief because there’s so much to learn from sadness, which has kind of been my philosophy as a writer for quite a bit of time now.

I wish I could be an essayist like Chung, because there was such an eloquent way she put all of her experiences into words. I wish I had the braincells and energy to do more long form versions of writing such as this.

Anyways, onwards with the review!

Months after her father dies, Nicole Chung’s mother is diagnosed with a terminal cancer.

Before reading this memoir, I was not familiar with Nicole Chung or her work, so I went into it with completely fresh eyes as a new reader. I was very aware about the subject of the book and was afraid of how I would get through it because of it, even though I have no yet experienced the death of my parents yet, but as I wrote before, I think it’s so important to sit back and think about these kinds of subjects and how people deal with it.

I have a slightly different process when I review memoirs when compared to other forms of writing, such as fiction or essays. Memoirs are deeply personal and someone’s life experiences, so often I turn to the writing and the form of storytelling to see how it flows on the page.

Chung is an excellent writer, that’s for sure. She’s open about what she has experienced, and tells us about how she was adopted as a baby because her birth family couldn’t take care of her.

She’s Korean American and was adopted by two white parents, and growing up in an isolated rural town in Oregon isn’t exactly the peak definition of diversity. There’s talk of the racism and discrimination she faces, but also realizing the extent of Oregon’s racist history—for so long, it was straight illegal for Black people to move to that state. And the lack of diversity, as well of opportunity, is what leads Chung to apply to school elsewhere.

Her family didn’t have money growing up, though she discusses how her parents hid that from her. She ends up getting a scholarship to attend a private school on the other side of the country, and marries her husband by the time she gets out of school.

There’s a push and pull constantly between her two lives, as her mother gets upset at one point because Chung did not get married in her hometown, nor did she end up having the ceremony in the Orthodox tradition her parents belong to. There’s mentions of whether Chung hates showing them to people or not, and there’s tinges of sadness when this comes up.

Then her father becomes sick and slowly dies. Now with two children, Nicole must face the facts that come with his death. Not long after, her mother is diagnosed with terminal cancer, and the COVID-19 pandemic happens. Unable to see her mother, and her grandmother dies, Chung is unable to do anything when her mother finally passes away. Forced to watch the funeral through a Zoom camera and mailed the remaining belongings of her family, there’s a lot to reflect on once her mother has passed.

I see memoirs like this as portraits. Chung does a great job in setting the scene and laying down the facts as she saw them, painting portraits of her parents before they pass on.

We tend to lose the memories we cherish the most over time, like how our mother smelled or the way someone would have a strange habit while doing something, and it is through this kind of writing that we can truly preserve someone after they’re gone. No photographs or old jewelry will be able to do that—and that’s the beauty of memoir writing about the deceased.

At the same time, Chung captures her grief in a productive way. Reflecting on the experiences, how her parents didn’t want to worry her about the money issues when she was a child, shows a certain kind of maturity and growth because of the experiences she has had. She feels so much guilt for not being able to visit her parents as much due to the lack of money she had, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t love them at the end of the day.

Overall Thoughts

It’s a lovely memoir. I read it in about an hour and a half, so it’s not that long. I think it’d be a difficult read for someone who recently lost their parents or a loved one, so I would give out that warning, but overall I think this is something most people should be able to pick up and emphasize with while they’re reading.

There are some books I’ve cried at while reading, but, honestly, I didn’t cry with Chung when I was reading it. It was deeply sad and moving, but I think the way everything is presented felt a little distant at times, like a form of journalism. That doesn’t mean it isn’t intimate—it definitely is going into her inner thoughts. But I simply couldn’t get on the same level spiritually as the author.

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