評論
打印
Unit 1 Paper Tigers
第一單元 紙老虎
Wesley Yang
衛斯理·楊
Millions of Americans must feel estranged from their own faces. But every self-estranged individual is estranged in his own way. I, for instance, am the child of Korean immigrants, but I do not speak my parents' native tongue. I have never dated a Korean woman. I don't have a Korean friend. Though I am an immigrant, I have never wanted to strive like one.
一定有無數的美國人對他們自己的長相會有一種疏離感，但是其中每個人的原因卻又不盡相同。以我自己為例，我是韓國移民的后裔，但我卻不會講我父母的母語，我從未跟韓國女性約過會，甚至都沒有韓國朋友。雖然我是移民，但是我從未想過像移民那樣努力奮斗。
You could say that l am a banana. But while I don't believe our roots necessarily define us, I do believe there are racially inflected assumptions wired into our neural circuitry. And although I am in most respects devoid of Asian characteristics, I do have an Asian face.
你可能會說我是亞裔美國人。雖然我并不認為一個人的種族出身就會決定他的一切，但我相信對各個種族的成見已經深深地植入了我們的思想里。盡管在很多方面，我已經沒了什么亞洲人的特點，但我確實長著一張亞洲人的臉。
Here is what I sometimes suspect my face signifies to other Americans: An invisible person, barely distinguishable from a mass of faces that resemble it. A conspicuous person standing apart from the crowd and yet devoid of any individuality. An icon of so much that the culture pretends to honor it in fact patronizes and exploits. Not just people "who are good at math" and play the violin, but a mass of stifled, repressed, abused, conformist quasi-robots who simply do not matter, socially or culturally.
我有時懷疑我的長相對于其他美國人來說代表著什么：像一個長著大眾臉的隱形人；一個站在人群里很顯眼但毫無個性的人；一個美國充化表面上十分尊重而實際上卻鄙視并利用的形象。我們不只是那些“數學學得很好”和會拉小提琴的人，而且是一群憋屈得要死、壓迫得不行、被虐得快殘了的循規蹈矩的半機器人，對社會和文化根本就沒什么影響力。
