zoe olesker’s Reviews > Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng > Status Update

“she feels like her turn is coming soon.”

“i guess we’re ghostbusters now.”

“who cares if another chinese girl is dead — they’ll hear me screaming and just put in their headphones and keep walking. even now, you want to walk away from us because it’s gross, because blood and guts make you uncomfortable. but it doesn’t matter if we’re uncomfortable — we don’t get to look away. we’re dying and no one can hear us.”

“‘we can’t just look for white men. you should have looked harder,’ they said. but white men are going after asian girls, and that’s all they have to go on, us being asian. no one wants to look harder at us. to imagine that we’re real people. every day i clean up their brains and blood and i know that a white man coming for me isn’t an if, it’s a when.”

“she has always been a white rabbit ready to dart away.”

i am FREAKED.

“she is the perfect person to haunt because no one will trust the things she says ever again. whatever she finds, it will be for her and her alone. no one will help her. no one will save her.”

“even when she is no one at all, just an echo of a dead person, she’s still chinese and no one will let her forget it.”

“she has failed once more at becoming someone”

“cora just wants to understand how people find their dreams”

“the worst part is i know i’m losing. you get a sense for it in games when things aren’t going your way, when it’s better to just start over. but this is my only life and i’m losing already, and i don’t know how to make it stop.”