Spanning decades and continents, All the Love in the World is a powerful novel in stories that chronicles the sweeping immigrant journey of the Park family. From a small bakery in rural Hawai'i to the flight schools of Oklahoma and the sacred rivers of India, the narrative examines the cultural resonance of the Korean diaspora and the pressures of acculturation. The text highlights familial bonds, particularly the sacrifices of parents and the lives of daughters Alex and Kitty as they navigate their heritage. Central themes include the pursuit of aviation, the labor of running a family bakery, and the inevitable decline brought on by aging and dementia.
Critics praise the collection for its tenderness and epic scope, capturing the struggle to preserve cultural identity when traditional ties are threatened. Ultimately, the work serves as a powerful meditation on love, inheritance, memory, and the search for belonging across different landscapes.
It asks a singular, aching question: How do we anchor ourselves when the history that should have held us has been left behind? This is a story for anyone who has ever wondered about the unspoken secrets that shape a family.
Fans of Maxine Hong Kingston, Garrett Hongo, and Jhumpa Lahiri will find resonance in this softly epic family tale.
Poet Cathy Song was born and raised in Hawaii. Her work draws on her rich Korean-Chinese ancestry as well as her experiences as an American and a woman. Her first volume of poems, Picture Bride, won the 1982 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award and was also nominated for that year's National Book Critics Circle Award. Her other collections include Cloud Moving Hands (2007), The Land of Bliss (2001), School Figures (1994), and Frameless Windows, Squares of Light (1988). In 1994, she received the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America.
"With lyric grace and the luminosity that is a distinct signature of her poetry, Cathy Song has created a rich tapestry of powerful stories and vividly drawn characters that can be read both sequentially as a novel and as a short story collection that takes a searching look at the cycle of human existence. Individually the pieces offer a satisfying narrative arc that yields beautifully crafted portraits of real people, the turning points of their lives, their stories of travel, love, aging, and death played out against the changing social and historical backdrop of Hawaiʻi. Collectively the stories affirm the power of memory to redeem, to bridge lives and bind three generations in a timeless tale of love and its endurance. It is a collection to cherish, as much for its compelling images and characters as for its profound wisdom and insights into what it means to be human, to love, to grow old and lose what you love." — Boey Kim Cheng, author of the travel memoir Between Stations and five collections of poetry
