What is the author's tone in the memoir, All You Can Ever Know?

The author’s word choice is highly poignant and emotional, as the novel is a personal narrative that focuses on the complexity of the emotions an adoptee experiences while growing up. Chung provides extensive description of sights, sounds, and emotions, using expressive word choice to construct the mood. Heartwarming scenes are illustrated with vivid intensity, and tragedies are similarly presented with descriptive imagery. For instance, Chung's initial realization that she was entering labor was a highly emotional scene that included expressive word choice to demonstrate her unconditional love for her newborn daughter. In an earlier scene where Chung first began understanding the frustrations of racism, she used a despairingly dark tone to characterize the patch of hair that she ripped out while daydreaming about being Caucasian. In both scenes, Chung uses vivid imagery to construct the tone of her narrative.