“As a child she knew her motherland as a place of violence and barbaric power struggles, for that is how they spoke of it in France, and that was what her exiled mother chose to believe. ‘We are lucky,’ whispered her mother, ‘that we survived it.’ But her mother did not survive France.”

“As a child she knew her motherland as a place of violence and barbaric power struggles, for that is how they spoke of it in France, and that was what her exiled mother chose to believe. ‘We are lucky,’ whispered her mother, ‘that we survived it.’ But her mother did not survive France.”

— R.F. Kuang