Cranesong Quotes

“Before the cremation, Mama and a few of the other older women sewed together a long tunic out of white-spun ramie. We thought it was the prettiest dress, made only more exquisite with Mama’s pink silk embroidery of lotus flowers strewn across the collar. We longed to try it on, to shed our blistered bodies and become women who belonged in such beautiful garments, those women who weaved shards of dawn in their hair and danced with August lightning oiling their calves.”
― Rona Wang, Cranesong

“This was unexpected, because Baba never did much of anything. The civil war was over and he’d fought on the right side, had slaughtered Kuomintang forces, razed cities to bone and salt. But when Baba came back, he carried the war with him. He knew things about death we could not begin to comprehend.”
― Rona Wang, Cranesong

“You began receiving the texts in late September, after the first date. You wore the
translucent dress with the high collar and open-shoulder sleeves that made you feel like you were a fashion writer for a New York magazine, or a high-powered exec of a Fortune 500 company: a shimmering butterfly, someone who mattered, not a
barely-eighteen college freshman who spent most evenings in her dorm room slurping Top Ramen.
The first guy was forty-five. His wife was the
same old song on the radio. He took you out for lobster and fried oysters. Afterwards, he grabbed your neck like you owed him something, and you closed your eyes and imagined pretty things: white-gold
ribbons of sunlight skimming the belly of oceans, the sequins falling from your prom dress the first time you slept with a guy, movies where everyone sings soprano and defies the laws of flight.”
― Rona Wang, Cranesong

“I was a good girl, for the most part. I could recite the fundamental theorem of calculus and the Gettysburg Address from memory. In the fall, I was going to study pre-med at Northeastern on a full ride. Pre-med. The thought of becoming a doctor—sifting through an endless haze of patients pulsing with sickness when I didn’t even know how to save myself—made me vaguely ill, but I couldn’t think of anything better to do.”
― Rona Wang, Cranesong