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Daisy Nation was from the northwestern end of Jamaica.
戴西·納森來(lái)自牙買(mǎi)加的西北邊陲，
Her great-grandfather was William Ford.
他偉大的祖父是威廉·福特，
He was from Island, and he arrived in Jamaica in 1784, having bought a coffee plantation.
來(lái)自愛(ài)爾蘭，他在1784年來(lái)到牙買(mǎi)加并買(mǎi)下了一片咖啡種植園，
Not long after his arrival, he bought a slave woman and took her as his concubine.
不久就買(mǎi)了一個(gè)奴隸，并娶她為妻。
He noticed her on the docks at Alligator Pond, a fishing village on the south coast.
他是在南海岸那個(gè)叫做短吻鱷池塘村的碼頭上看見(jiàn)她的，
She was an Igbo tribeswoman from West Africa. They had a son, whom they named John.
她是一個(gè)東非南端伊博部落的女人，他們生了個(gè)叫約翰的男孩，
He was, in the language of the day, a "mulatto";
在當(dāng)時(shí)來(lái)說(shuō)，他就是一個(gè)“黑白混血兒。”
he was colored-and all of the Fords from that point on fell into Jamaica's colored class.
從那以后，福特家族就烙上了牙買(mǎi)加血統(tǒng)的印記。
In the American South during the same period,it would be highly unusual for a white landowner to have had so public relationship with a slave.
在那個(gè)時(shí)代的美國(guó)南部，一個(gè)白人地主和一個(gè)奴隸成為夫妻是很不尋常的。
Sexual relations between blacks and whites were considered morally repugnant.
白人和黑人的男女關(guān)系不但在道德上不被允許，
Laws were past prohibiting miscegenation, the last of which were not struck down by the US Supreme Court until 1967.
而且還被法律禁止通婚，這個(gè)法律一直到1967年才被最高法院廢除。
A plantation owner who lived openly with a slave woman would have been socially ostracized,
一個(gè)種植園地主和一個(gè)奴隸女人生活在一起是被社會(huì)擯棄的，
and any offspring from the union of black and white would have been left in slavery.
他們所有的后代也將都會(huì)是奴隸身份。
In Jamaica, attitudes were very different.
但在牙買(mǎi)加，這種態(tài)度就很不一樣。
The Caribbean in those years was little more than a massive slave colony.
在那些年里，加勒比海就是大量奴隸的聚居地。
Blacks outnumbered whites by a factor of more than ten to one.
黑人多于白人，數(shù)量達(dá)到了10比1。
There were few, if any, marriageable white women on the island, and as a result,
島上幾乎沒(méi)有可以結(jié)婚的白人女性，
the overwhelming majority of white men on the island had black or brown mistresses.
這就導(dǎo)致了島上大量成年白人男人娶了黑人或者棕色皮膚的女性。
One British plantation owner in Jamaica who famously kept a precise diary of his sexual exploits
在牙買(mǎi)加有一個(gè)英國(guó)種植園主，因?yàn)橐槐救沼浂皇廊怂?/div>
slept with 138 different women in his 37 years on the island, almost all of them slaves and, one imagines, not all of them willing partners.
在那本日記里，他詳細(xì)地記錄了在島上37年間同138個(gè)不同女人發(fā)生關(guān)系的過(guò)程，可以想象，她們幾乎都只是奴隸，而她們也并不是都希望成為他的情人。
And whites saw mulattoes—the children of those relationships—as potential allies, a buffer between them and the enormous number of slaves on the island.
白人將那些混血兒看成一個(gè)潛在的同盟，可以調(diào)解他們同島上奴隸之間的關(guān)系。
Mulatto women were prized as mistresses, and their children, one shade lighter in turn,
作為女主人的混血婦女很受珍重，她們的孩子，皮膚會(huì)淡些,
moved still further of the social and economic ladder. Mulattos rarely worked in the fields.
而且社會(huì)地位和經(jīng)濟(jì)階層也會(huì)相應(yīng)提高。混血婦女很少在田間勞作。
