評論
打印
My great-grandfather was a drunk in Detroit, who sometimes managed to hold down a factory job.
我的曾祖父曾經住在底特律，他是個酒鬼，有時勉強去工廠工作。
He had, as unbelievable as it might sound, 21 children, with one woman, my great-grandmother, who died at 47 years old of ovarian cancer.
他和我的曾祖母有21個孩子，聽起來難以置信，我的曾祖母因為卵巢癌，于47歲去世。
Now, I'm pregnant with my second child, and I cannot even fathom what she must have gone through.
現在，我懷著第二個孩子，我甚至不敢想象她經歷了什么。
And if you're trying to do the math -- there were six sets of twins.
如果你們算一下的話，其中有6對雙胞胎。
So my grandfather, their son, became a traveling salesman, and he lived boom and bust.
我的祖父，也就是他們的兒子，當了一名旅行推銷員，生活起伏不定。
So my dad grew up answering the door for debt collectors and pretending his parents weren't home.
因此我父親的童年一直就是，給催債的人開門，假裝說父母不在家。
He actually took his braces off himself with pliers in the garage,
我祖父說沒有錢去看正牙醫。
when his father admitted he didn't have money to go back to the orthodontist.
我父親就自己在車庫里用鉗子把牙套拔掉。
So my dad, unsurprisingly, became a bankruptcy lawyer. Couldn't write this in a novel, right?
因此不足為奇，我父親成了一位破產清算律師。這可不能寫在小說里，對吧？
He was obsessed with providing a secure foundation for my brother and I.
他一心想為我們姐弟倆提供穩定的生活。
So I ask these questions by way of a few generations of struggle.
因此我通過描述幾代人的奮斗，回答了剛才的問題
My parents made sure that I grew up on a kind of steady ground that allows one to question and risk and leap.
父母想確保我的成長建立在穩固的基礎上，在這種基礎上就會產生質疑、風險、冒險。
And ironically, and probably sometimes to their frustration,
具有諷刺意味的是，可能對此我的父母也很失望，
it is their steadfast commitment to security that allows me to question its value,
正是因為他們想要為我提供穩定生活的決心，我才開始質疑其價值
or at least its value as we've historically defined it in the 21st century.
或是說，21世紀對其價值的定義。
