On Being an Outsider 完整註解
閱讀前你該知道的事
“我喜歡我的孩子們是混血,我不確定他們需要多長時間才能理解他們豐富複雜的身份背景,但我相信他們終究會明白。我從未想過這除了優勢之外還能是什麼。”
另作者沒想到的是,小孩告訴她的一些事情卻與她想像的完全不同。
閱讀前你該知道的詞彙
outsider 「圈外人、局外人」
hapa 原是一個夏威夷語的詞,指「一半」,用來描述半夏威夷半白人的血統。後來逐漸廣泛用來指稱具有混合血統的人。
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Before I had any children of my own, I spent a decade and a half living in places where I was an outsider. While I never lost the feeling of estrangement that comes from missing basic cultural cues, for me this was a period of great liberation. I loved the freedom that being a stranger gave me. I loved the fact that people were unable to “place” me and that I was also largely free of preconceptions about them.
preconception 「先入為主的觀念」「成見」
文中 free of ... 指「免受到 ...」,free of preconception 意思就是免受到他人對自己種族的成見,因為看不出來是哪國人。
在我有自己的孩子之前,我曾在外地生活了十五年 (a decade and a half),那些地方我始終是個局外人。不過,儘管我一直感受到文化差異所產生的疏離感 (estrangement),但那段時間我享受著無拘無束自由。我喜愛作為一個陌生人所帶來的自由感。我喜歡人們無法輕易“定位”我,也因此無法對我有成見。
This experience was only amplified when I met and married my husband. I had grown up in Boston in a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant family. He was a Maori from New Zealand, and when we married we both became members of communities we knew little about. This, too, had its challenges, but we both experienced it primarily as an opportunity to learn — and be — something new.
這段經歷在我遇到並嫁給我的丈夫時更加顯著 (amplified)。我在波士頓長大,出生於一個白人盎格魯-撒克遜新教 (Anglo-Saxon Protestant) 家庭。他是來自新西蘭的毛利人 (Maori),當我們結婚時,我們都成為了陌生群體中的新成員(作者不熟悉毛利文化,她丈夫也不熟悉盎格魯-撒克遜新教)。這同樣有它的挑戰,但我們更多的是將它視為學習和成長的機會。
(不用特別了解他們的家庭,重點是他們來自截然不同的背景,結婚後各對對方的背景文化完全不熟悉,又再次成為 “局外人”。)
When we began having children — three boys in seven years — I was excited by the idea that our kids were going to have a complex identity. It would begin simply with the way they looked. My husband is dark, I am fair, our children are a range of in-between. They all have dark eyes, dark hair, neither curly nor straight, and skin that is light in winter and goes brown quickly in the sun. Ethnically speaking, they are quite difficult to place; over the years they have been mistaken for Latino, Iranian, Turkish, Pakistani, half-Korean, half-Japanese.
Ex. technically speaking 嚴格來說
generally speaking 一般來說
Ethnic 「族裔、種族的」
Ethnically speaking 從族裔角度來說
當我們開始有孩子時(七年內生了三個男孩)我對孩子們將擁有複雜身份的想法感到興奮。從他們的外貌就看得出來他們的多元背景。我的丈夫皮膚較黑,而我比較白皙,我們的孩子則是介於兩者之間。他們都有深色的眼睛和頭髮(既不捲曲也不直),他們的皮膚在冬天較淺,在夏天的陽光下很快就會曬成棕色。從族裔角度來說,他們很難被歸類;多年來,人們曾誤認他們為拉丁裔、伊朗人、土耳其人、巴基斯坦人、半韓裔或半日裔。
I loved the idea that our children were ethnically ambiguous. I saw this as their passport to freedom and viewed our boys as citizens of the world. I wasn’t sure how long it would take them to understand it, but I was confident that the rich complexity of their ancestry would become apparent to them in time. It never crossed my mind that it could be anything other than a bonus.
ethnically ambiguous 意思就是種族背景上不明確,無法從外觀準確判斷一個人的種族。
ancestry 「祖宗、祖先」
文中也可以理解成「背景身份」
cross my mind「想過某件事」
Ex. It has crossed my mind that he was lying. 我有想過他在說謊。
apparent 「明顯的」
文中指 the rich complexity of their ancestry would become apparent「他們豐富複雜的身份背景會變得明顯; 他們終究會明白」
我喜歡我們孩子們種族背景的模糊性。我將這視為他們自由的護照,認為他們是世界的公民。我不確定他們需要多長時間才能理解他們豐富複雜的身份背景,但我相信他們終究會明白。我從未想過這除了優勢之外還能是什麼。
It helped that early in our married life we lived for a time in Honolulu. Hawaii is an unusual place, demographically speaking. The population is European, Japanese, Hawaiian, Filipino — there is no ethnic majority, and nearly a quarter of the people who live there identify as “hapa,” meaning that they belong to two or more different groups. Hawaii was a comfortable place for us as a family. Our friends were Indonesian, half-Chinese, Pakeha New Zealander; it seemed as though everyone we knew was either some kind of mixture or came from someplace else.
比較常見的是 ethnic minority 「少數民族」
as though ... 「就好像 ...」
Ex. He handled the situation as though he has been through it before. 他處理這個問題的方式就好像他以前經歷過一樣
我們婚後早期在 Honolulu(檀香山)住了一段時間是有幫助的。以人口學的角度 (demographically) 來看,夏威夷是一個特別的地方。那裡的人口包括歐洲人、日本人、夏威夷人、菲律賓人,沒有明顯的多數民族跟少數民族的問題,而且近四分之一在那生活的人自認為是 “hapa 混血兒”,表示他們屬於至少兩個不同的族群。夏威夷對我們這樣的家庭來說是一個舒適的地方。我們的朋友是印尼人、半中國人、新西蘭白人;好像我們認識的每個人要麼是某種混血,要麼來自其他地方。
Our three sons are now grown, and it recently occurred to me to ask about their experience of being hapa. Some of what they told me came as a surprise.
我們的三個兒子都已經長大了,最近我想到該詢問他們作為混血兒的經歷。他們告訴我的一些事情卻讓我感到意外。