A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung

We are never ready to say ´good bye´ to our parents. By birth or by adoption, those who watched us growing up are shaping our way to see the world. Genetics or not, we are carrying with us a generational luggage that remains with us, and is eventually further transmited to our children.

A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung is a memoir of grief. Adopted as an infant, she grew up in a working middle class family. At a distance of about two years she will lose first her father, and then her mother, the latter in the midst of the pandemic. 

Chung shares a deep understanding of the challenging social condition of her family, in the wider context of the urban American middle class. Her parents were hard working, but with an instable employment situation, therefore, an insecure health plan. Especially in the case of her father, with ´health probvlems exacerbated by financial insecurity, inaccessible medical care´. 

In her own words:

´This is a country that take little responsibility for the healths and well-being of its citizens while urging us to blame each other - and ourselves - for our precarity under an exploitative system in which all but a small member of us stand to suffer or lose much´.

The first part of the memoir is largely dedicated to those topics and her clarity and knowledge of the social context are very precise as well informed.

The second part deals largely with the sudden decline in health of her mother and her death. As a mother herself, the grief is amplified, but although not replaceable, the absence of her mother brought her closer to creating a support community, including her birth sister with whom she connected over years.

A Living Remedy is Chung´s second memoir. The first one - which I haven´t read yet - is dedicated to the story of her adoption. 

I appreciated her deep evocative voice, exploring the many faces of grief and interest in understanding things and explaining facts. She wrote a memoir that does not ignore the social realities and their formative influence on individual life stories.

Rating: 4 stars