美国国家公共电台 NPR New Novel Explores 'What We Lose' When We Lose A Parent

 

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

Who do we become when we lose a parent? That transformation¹ is at the heart of Zinzi Clemmons' novel "What We Lose." The central character, Thandi, grapples with the loss of her mother to cancer, a woman she revered² but often fought with as well. Thandi is mixed race, and her feelings of being an outsider in her community take on renewed meaning after her mom's death.

This book could have been a memoir³. Clemmons, like Thandi, is the daughter of a South African mother and an American father, and she lost her mother to breast cancer in 2012. But she made it a book of fiction, she says, in order to move the story past her own personal one.

ZINZI CLEMMONS: I had always written about my mother. I started writing in college in a creative writing class. And some of the first stories I wrote were talking about different disagreements that we had. But what was important was the kind of larger struggles that were embodied⁴ in those arguments. I just published an essay about the conception⁵ of this book, and I talk about the issue of hair and how the struggle of hair between black mothers and black daughters is fraught⁶ with all of these racial tensions that are basically absorbed from the larger culture.

So I had always written about my mother as a way to write about these larger issues and about immigration and gender⁷ and motherhood. And during the time that my mother's health took a turn for the worse, I was a grad student at Columbia in their MFA program. And actually, it was the last day of school. And we had our graduation ceremony. And I found out that my mom was, you know, had a few months to live.

So I pretty immediately - because I was done with school - packed my things up. I quit the job that I had and moved back to Philadelphia and basically spent the last six months with her. It was, you know, it's an around-the-clock job. It's very draining. And at the end of the day, the only thing I had time to write were basically one paragraph or sometimes a sentence - reflections. And I just started collecting them in this folder⁸. And I didn't tend to do anything with them, but they all started to fit together in this large story.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I want to have you read from one of those vignettes, Page 31.

CLEMMONS: (Reading) I've often thought that being a light-skinned black woman is like being a well-dressed person who is also homeless. You may be able to pass in mainstream⁹ society, appearing acceptable¹⁰ to others, even desired. But in reality, you have nowhere to rest, nowhere to feel safe. Even while you're out in public feeling, fine and free, inside, you cannot shake the feeling of rootlessness. Others may even envy you, but this masks the fact that at night, there is nowhere safe for you, no place to call your own.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Tell me a little bit about what that passage means to you. What were you trying to say?

CLEMMONS: I think it comes across - it's just sort of a deep loneliness. It always is like I've never had this or maybe never felt that I've had a group that I could belong to without any question to it. And even though that statement is absolutely true and being someone like me feels lonely, I do also want to say that loneliness is very different from being harassed¹¹ or being dismissed or abused because of the color of your skin.

And I think what I would also like people to take away from this book - because I have passages like that, and then I also have passages where I talk about the struggle of black people over time in Africa and here - that I don't mean to ever engage in oppression Olympics. And I think that that has unfortunately been the conversation when we talk about colorism in black communities. So it's just a statement of, you know, what that feels like, but it's not in an effort to sort of place it above anyone else's struggle.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Is it harder to define¹² yourself after a parent is gone?

CLEMMONS: I think that the loss of a parent does sort of force that definition - right? - because your parents are almost like a physical embodiment of your genetics and all of your roots. At the same time, it's very hard when you have a really long relationship with your parents to see them from the outside and to see them as people. And so I think when you have a parent pass away, you bookend their life. And you're able to see them from a different perspective and to separate yourself from those visible roots.

And it's also something that you are forced to do because, you know, as a woman especially, you know, I've sort of found out in my own life that especially when it comes to questions of family and of whether I want to become a mother myself, all of those things are things that I would have loved to be able to talk to my mother about, but I have to figure them out on my own. So I do have to define myself much more strongly now because I don't have another choice, really.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: The novel is called "What We Lose" by Zinzi Clemmons. Thank you so much for joining us today.

CLEMMONS: Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF HAMMOCK'S, "LOSING TO YOU")

1 transformation   

n.变化；改造；转变

参考例句：

• Going to college brought about a dramatic transformation in her outlook.上大学使她的观念发生了巨大的变化。
• He was struggling to make the transformation from single man to responsible husband.他正在努力使自己由单身汉变为可靠的丈夫。

2 revered   

v.崇敬，尊崇，敬畏( revere的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• A number of institutions revered and respected in earlier times have become Aunt Sally for the present generation. 一些早年受到尊崇的惯例，现在已经成了这代人嘲弄的对象了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The Chinese revered corn as a gift from heaven. 中国人将谷物奉为上天的恩赐。 来自辞典例句

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 embodied   

v.表现( embody的过去式和过去分词 )；象征；包括；包含

参考例句：

• a politician who embodied the hopes of black youth 代表黑人青年希望的政治家
• The heroic deeds of him embodied the glorious tradition of the troops. 他的英雄事迹体现了军队的光荣传统。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 conception   

n.思想，观念，概念，构想，设想，怀孕

参考例句：

• He's got a pretty strange conception of friendship.他对友谊有一种非常独特的见解。
• A good novelist needs great power of conception.一个好的小说家需要丰富的想象力。

6 fraught   

adj.充满…的，伴有(危险等)的；忧虑的

参考例句：

• The coming months will be fraught with fateful decisions.未来数月将充满重大的决定。
• There's no need to look so fraught!用不着那么愁眉苦脸的！

7 gender   

n.（生理上的）性，（名词、代词等的）性

参考例句：

• French differs from English in having gender for all nouns.法语不同于英语，所有的名词都有性。
• Women are sometimes denied opportunities solely because of their gender.妇女有时仅仅因为性别而无法获得种种机会。

8 folder   

n.纸夹，文件夹

参考例句：

• Peter returned the plan and charts to their folder.彼得把这份计划和表格放回文件夹中。
• He draws the document from its folder.他把文件从硬纸夹里抽出来。

9 mainstream   

n.（思想或行为的）主流；adj.主流的

参考例句：

• Their views lie outside the mainstream of current medical opinion.他们的观点不属于当今医学界观点的主流。
• Polls are still largely reflects the mainstream sentiment.民调还在很大程度上反映了社会主流情绪。

10 acceptable   

adj.可接受的，合意的，受欢迎的

参考例句：

• The terms of the contract are acceptable to us.我们认为这个合同的条件可以接受。
• Air pollution in the city had reached four times the acceptable levels.这座城市的空气污染程度曾高达可接受标准的四倍。

11 harassed   

adj. 疲倦的，厌烦的 动词harass的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• He has complained of being harassed by the police. 他投诉受到警方侵扰。
• harassed mothers with their children 带着孩子的疲惫不堪的母亲们

12 define   

vt.解释，下定义，阐述，限定，规定

参考例句：

• Please define the words.请解释这些字的意义。
• It's hard to define exactly what has changed.很难解释清楚到底发生了什么变化。