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One day, after her husband had died, she was traveling on a train to visit her daughter,
她的丈夫去世后，她乘火車前往女兒家探望，
and she met and took an interested in a light-skinned man in the same railway car.
她在火車上遇見一個膚色很淡的男青年，并對他產生好感。
What happened next is something that Aunt Joan told only my mother years later, with the greatest of shame.
但接下來發生的事情，瓊阿姨說在幾年后只對我的母親說過，她覺得非常羞愧。
When she got off the train, she walked right by her daughter, disowning her own flesh and blood,
當走下火車，她走在女兒的右邊，因為她的女兒沒有繼承她的膚色基因，
because she did not want a man so light-skinned and desirable to know that she had borne a daughter so dark.
她不想一個如此可愛的白人男青年知道她生了個這么黑的女兒。
In the 1960s, my mother wrote a book about her experiences.
20世紀60年代，我的母親寫了一本關于她人生經歷的書，
It was entitled Brown Face, Big Master, the "Brown Face" referring to herself and the "Big Master" referring, in the Jamaica dialect, to God.
書名為《棕色面孔，大主人》。“棕色面孔”是指她自己，“大主人”在牙買加方言中是指上帝的意思。
At one point, she describes a time just after my parents were married when they were living in London and my eldest brother was still a baby.
有一次，她寫到她和我父親到倫敦生活，那是他們剛結婚不久，我的大哥還是一個嬰兒。
They were looking for an apartment, and after a long search, my father found one in a London suburb.
他們正在找公寓，找了很久也沒有找到，后來我的父親在倫敦郊區找到一所公寓。
On the day after they moved in, however, the landlady ordered them out.
但是，就在他們搬進來的第二天，房東太太命令他們搬走。
"You didn't tell my your wife was Jamaican," she told my father in a rage.
“你沒有告訴我，你的妻子是牙買加人。”她很憤怒地對我的父親說。
In her book, my mother describes her long struggle to make sense of this humiliation, to reconcile her experience with her faith.
在書中，我的母親描述了她長期與這種侮辱進行的思想斗爭，以便使她的經歷與她的信仰協調。
In the end, she was forced to acknowledge that anger was not an option,
最后，她不得不接受的事實是，憤怒不是解決辦法。
that as a colored Jamaican whose family has benefited for generations from the hierarchy of race,
作為一個有色人種的牙買加人，一個種族階級世代傳承的家庭，
she could hardly reproach another for the impulse to divide people by the shade of their skin.
她幾乎無法再責備他人按膚色劃分人的地位高低：
