美国国家公共电台 NPR--Possanza's book focuses on 7 lesbian couples representing eras of the 20th century

Possanza's book focuses on 7 lesbian couples representing eras of the 20th century

Transcript¹

Author Amelia Possanza reflects on her debut² book, Lesbian Love Story: A Memoir³ in Archives.

A MART?NEZ, HOST:

When writer Amelia Possanza moved to Brooklyn, she found herself, for the first time, surrounded by queer stories on historical placards, on her LGBTQ swim team and on her TV screen. But these stories were rarely about lesbians or lesbians in love. So Possanza began a journey to uncover the romances and role models written out of history. NPR's Julie Depenbrock has the story.

JULIE DEPENBROCK, BYLINE⁴: Amelia Possanza is a part-time writer and a full-time⁵ publicist.

AMELIA POSSANZA: So I like to think of this project as me taking on being the publicist for lesbians.

DEPENBROCK: Her book, "Lesbian Love Story: A Memoir In Archives," focuses on seven couples, each representing a different era in the 20th century.

POSSANZA: And they're not, you know, traditionally well-known people. It's not, oh, here's the story of how Eleanor Roosevelt was secretly a lesbian, or here's the story of Emily Dickinson, who was maybe in love with her brother's wife. It's people who really kind of lived daringly and left some record of living a queer life.

DEPENBROCK: There's also a surprising amount about swimming in the book. Part of that, Possanza says, could be her own bias⁶. She swims for a gay and lesbian aquatic⁷ team in New York. Another part is just what it means to feel free in your body.

POSSANZA: One sort of unexpected thing that came up for me in writing is there's so much policing of what women, lesbians, queer people wore, and that policing actually became a way of just policing queerness in general. Today we have drag bans in certain states, and before those existed, you know, before there was explicit⁸ terminology⁹ to ban these things, it was - a lot of it was based on what you wore. And I think the beach was somewhere to be free of that, especially if you could find a nude¹⁰ beach, if you could be in the water.

DEPENBROCK: Possanza didn't grow up with many stories about lesbians, but, she says, they're right there, even when the word is not used, even when that part of their story is erased¹¹.

POSSANZA: I come from a really nerdy family of readers. My father is a classicist, and my mother is a librarian, and I think they very much raised me to believe that, like, oh, if you're going to have an experience and you're nervous about it or you don't know about it, you can go read a book about it, right? Getting ready to go to school, getting ready to live away from home, there's all these stories to sort of guide you. And I realized that there actually weren't a lot of stories that I had about lesbians to guide me. And so I think doing this project made me start thinking about what gets you remembered, what generates records. You know, prisons generate records. Governments generate records. You know, sometimes being in love doesn't generate records.

DEPENBROCK: But Mary Casal and Mabel Hampton did leave records. Casal met the love of her life in a hotel lobby in 1892 and then wrote her own memoir. Hampton stayed with her partner for 40 years and lent her voice to the Lesbian Herstory Archives, a New York City-based museum dedicated¹² to preserving lesbian history. Too often, queer stories end in tragedy. But what binds¹³ these stories together is how these lesbians create pockets of safety, security and community, even in the most hostile circumstances.

Julie Depenbrock, NPR News.

MART?NEZ: And if you're looking to add something to your Pride month reading list, Amelia Possanza's book, "Lesbian Love Story: A Memoir In Archives," has just been released.

1 transcript   

n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书

参考例句：

• A transcript of the tapes was presented as evidence in court.一份录音带的文字本作为证据被呈交法庭。
• They wouldn't let me have a transcript of the interview.他们拒绝给我一份采访的文字整理稿。

2 debut   

n.首次演出，初次露面

参考例句：

• That same year he made his Broadway debut, playing a suave radio journalist.在那同一年里，他初次在百老汇登台，扮演一个温文而雅的电台记者。
• The actress made her debut in the new comedy.这位演员在那出新喜剧中首次登台演出。

3 memoir   

n.[pl.]回忆录，自传；记事录

参考例句：

• He has just published a memoir in honour of his captain.他刚刚出了一本传记来纪念他的队长。
• In her memoir,the actress wrote about the bittersweet memories of her first love.在那个女演员的自传中，她写到了自己苦乐掺半的初恋。

4 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

5 full-time   

adj.满工作日的或工作周的，全时间的

参考例句：

• A full-time job may be too much for her.全天工作她恐怕吃不消。
• I don't know how she copes with looking after her family and doing a full-time job.既要照顾家庭又要全天工作，我不知道她是如何对付的。

6 bias   

n.偏见，偏心，偏袒；vt.使有偏见

参考例句：

• They are accusing the teacher of political bias in his marking.他们在指控那名教师打分数有政治偏见。
• He had a bias toward the plan.他对这项计划有偏见。

7 aquatic   

adj.水生的，水栖的

参考例句：

• Aquatic sports include swimming and rowing.水上运动包括游泳和划船。
• We visited an aquatic city in Italy.我们在意大利访问过一个水上城市。

8 explicit   

adj.详述的，明确的；坦率的；显然的

参考例句：

• She was quite explicit about why she left.她对自己离去的原因直言不讳。
• He avoids the explicit answer to us.他避免给我们明确的回答。

9 terminology   

n.术语；专有名词

参考例句：

• He particularly criticized the terminology in the document.他特别批评了文件中使用的术语。
• The article uses rather specialized musical terminology.这篇文章用了相当专业的音乐术语。

10 nude   

adj.裸体的；n.裸体者，裸体艺术品

参考例句：

• It's a painting of the Duchess of Alba in the nude.这是一幅阿尔巴公爵夫人的裸体肖像画。
• She doesn't like nude swimming.她不喜欢裸泳。

11 erased   

v.擦掉( erase的过去式和过去分词 )；抹去；清除

参考例句：

• He erased the wrong answer and wrote in the right one. 他擦去了错误答案，写上了正确答案。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He removed the dogmatism from politics; he erased the party line. 他根除了政治中的教条主义，消除了政党界限。 来自《简明英汉词典》

12 dedicated   

adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的

参考例句：

• He dedicated his life to the cause of education.他献身于教育事业。
• His whole energies are dedicated to improve the design.他的全部精力都放在改进这项设计上了。

13 binds   

v.约束( bind的第三人称单数 )；装订；捆绑；（用长布条）缠绕

参考例句：

• Frost binds the soil. 霜使土壤凝结。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Stones and cement binds strongly. 石头和水泥凝固得很牢。 来自《简明英汉词典》