英语 英语 日语 日语 韩语 韩语 法语 法语 德语 德语 西班牙语 西班牙语 意大利语 意大利语 阿拉伯语 阿拉伯语 葡萄牙语 葡萄牙语 越南语 越南语 俄语 俄语 芬兰语 芬兰语 泰语 泰语 泰语 丹麦语 泰语 对外汉语

美国国家公共电台 NPR 'New People' Author Danzy Senna Loves The Troublesome Characters

时间:2017-08-10 02:29来源:互联网 提供网友:nan   字体: [ ]
特别声明:本栏目内容均从网络收集或者网友提供,供仅参考试用,我们无法保证内容完整和正确。如果资料损害了您的权益,请与站长联系,我们将及时删除并致以歉意。
    (单词翻译:双击或拖选)

 

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

"New People" is a novel where infatuation gnaws1 at what looks like happiness. Maria lives in Brooklyn with Khalil, her fiance. They met at Stanford. And they love each other, the light skin color they share and the life they begin in the late 1990s - Khalil, an up and coming dot-commer; Maria, a grad student studying the Jonestown massacre2. They're called the king and queen of the Racially Nebulous Prom. But Maria's eye wanders to a poet who is vividly3 and distinctly different from her fiance. "New People" is the new novel by Danzy Senna, author of the best-selling "Caucasia" and winner of the 2017 John Dos Passos Prize for Literature. She joins us from Martha's Vineyard, Mass.

Thanks so much for being with us.

DANZY SENNA: Thank you so much for having me.

SIMON: I hope this doesn't give anything away, but what does Maria see in the poet? I mean, we don't see much of his poetry.

SENNA: That's true. We don't have any of his poetry. And the first scene of the novel is just her kind of going into a infatuation state with this poet she sees reading. And I liked keeping him somewhat mysterious so that he could become more of the object of her projections4, the way that often people we become infatuated are. And so she fills, into this person she doesn't know very well, all of these commonalities she believes they share. And he is, unlike her fiance, not mixed race. He's black. She's biracial. I think there is a quest for, maybe, authenticity5 and for something, quote, "real" that she's looking for and sort of not finding in her life.

SIMON: It's a very intricate and clever and moving and ultimately upsetting novel, but I think a reader would keep asking, Khalil is a great guy. I mean, what's her problem?

SENNA: Yeah, I wasn't trying to write a female character who was necessarily the person I would want as my best friend. Maria is a very conflicted and problematic and sort of deceitful character. And as a novelist, we want the character that's going to kind of cause trouble in their own life and those of others. And that's where the story is and the pulse. So for me, this very kind of troubling and troublesome female character was much more compelling than someone who would always do the right thing and make healthy choices.

SIMON: What made you decide to put Maria's pursuit of the story of the Jonestown massacre into the novel? Because this isn't just a phrase - you actually follow her as she researches it.

SENNA: Yeah, the Jonestown massacre is something I've been fascinated with for really seven years, long before I started writing Maria. And I read everything I could about it. I was fascinated with the way that Jim Jones used all the rhetoric6 of racial liberation and progressive politics and kind of left-wing, you know, enlightenment to lead all of these people to their death and the sort of paradox7 of the Jonestown massacre that it sounded really amazing in terms of this utopia he was creating. And then it went so terribly wrong, and it reverberated8 in me, as someone who was raised in the '70s, in a sort of multiracial family. And a lot of the politics of my parents and their friends were reflected in those people in Jonestown.

And I felt the novel is really a comic novel, but there's a lot of darkness and seriousness underneath9 it. And Jonestown really added, for me, that level of sobriety and tragedy to the story. And I felt if there was one thing that you could study that would sort of throw you over the edge, it would be the Jonestown massacre...

(LAUGHTER)

SIMON: Yeah.

SENNA: ...For someone like Maria especially.

SIMON: As you mentioned, you're from what I'll call a mixed-race literary family - your mother, the poet-novelist Fanny Howe and then your father Carl Senna, editor and academic. I gather they were divorced when you were young.

SENNA: Yes, they were divorced in the '70s. And I wrote a memoir10 and talked about how their marriage was sort of - I think I called it an interracial couple out of a dream. They were written up in...

SIMON: Yeah.

SENNA: ...The newspaper, and they were sort of the fantasy, late-'60s interracial couple, two writers getting married at the height of the civil rights movement. And they divorced, then, actually around the time of Jonestown (laughter), which I think that suggests why I'm sort of interested in it on a personal level...

SIMON: Yeah.

SENNA: ...And the kind of - the falling apart of that fantasy. And luckily, you know, it didn't go as badly as Jonestown (laughter). Nothing has...

SIMON: Yeah.

SENNA: ...Ever gone as badly as Jonestown in that era. But, you know, definitely, there was the fantasy and then the reality of their marriage. And so I was raised really thinking a lot about these issues from a very young age. And so it's very natural for it to kind of come into my work.

SIMON: I'm interested in the fact that you write about mixed-race relationships. And I wonder, in our world, the country we live in today - has that become its own kind of literary genre11? And forgive me for using the word genre.

SENNA: I think it's always been a theme in American literature. And, you know, one of the things I'm interested in is how American literature - you know, race - Mark Twain, Faulkner, you know, James Baldwin - this is not something that's new. It's part of our origin story as a people. And so it's, I think, always been there. And it keeps coming up. And the thing that's maybe sort of jarring to people who don't think about it every day and it doesn't exist in their skin, is that it is still so much a part of our identity and the thing that we're grappling with, you know, 400-plus years later. You know, it's still part of us.

SIMON: The novel, of course, ends at a certain point. I wonder if Maria goes on in you somewhere. Do you still think of her? Have you figured a way out?

SENNA: I do.

SIMON: Yeah?

SENNA: Yeah, I leave her in a very precarious12 position. And...

SIMON: Oh, I'll say, yes.

SENNA: (Laughter) And I tend to like stories that end a little bit before there's resolution or redemption. For me, that ending was very clear and left her very much alive. And I didn't judge her at all as I was writing this. I felt I inhabited her without any judgment13 and watched her and led her down this path and this sort of rabbit hole. You know, I felt very attached to her by the end. And it was hard for me to let her go.

SIMON: I don't mind telling you I admired the ending, but I wish you'd put another three or four pages in there 'cause...

(LAUGHTER)

SIMON: ...I wanted to see how things would work out.

SENNA: Yeah, I'm sure you're not the only reader who will feel that.

SIMON: Danzy Senna, her new novel "New People" - thanks so much for being with us.

SENNA: Thanks so much for having me.


点击收听单词发音收听单词发音  

1 gnaws 04e1b90666fd26b87dd1f890c734a7bb     
咬( gnaw的第三人称单数 ); (长时间) 折磨某人; (使)苦恼; (长时间)危害某事物
参考例句:
  • Time, whose tooth gnaws away everything else, is powerless against truth. 时间,它的利齿可咬碎万物,但对真理却无能为力。
  • The water gnaws at the shoreline. 海水侵蚀海岸线。
2 massacre i71zk     
n.残杀,大屠杀;v.残杀,集体屠杀
参考例句:
  • There was a terrible massacre of villagers here during the war.在战争中,这里的村民惨遭屠杀。
  • If we forget the massacre,the massacre will happen again!忘记了大屠杀,大屠杀就有可能再次发生!
3 vividly tebzrE     
adv.清楚地,鲜明地,生动地
参考例句:
  • The speaker pictured the suffering of the poor vividly.演讲者很生动地描述了穷人的生活。
  • The characters in the book are vividly presented.这本书里的人物写得栩栩如生。
4 projections 7275a1e8ba6325ecfc03ebb61a4b9192     
预测( projection的名词复数 ); 投影; 投掷; 突起物
参考例句:
  • Their sales projections are a total thumbsuck. 他们的销售量预测纯属估计。
  • The council has revised its projections of funding requirements upwards. 地方议会调高了对资金需求的预测。
5 authenticity quyzq     
n.真实性
参考例句:
  • There has been some debate over the authenticity of his will. 对于他的遗嘱的真实性一直有争论。
  • The museum is seeking an expert opinion on the authenticity of the painting. 博物馆在请专家鉴定那幅画的真伪。
6 rhetoric FCnzz     
n.修辞学,浮夸之言语
参考例句:
  • Do you know something about rhetoric?你懂点修辞学吗?
  • Behind all the rhetoric,his relations with the army are dangerously poised.在冠冕堂皇的言辞背后,他和军队的关系岌岌可危。
7 paradox pAxys     
n.似乎矛盾却正确的说法;自相矛盾的人(物)
参考例句:
  • The story contains many levels of paradox.这个故事存在多重悖论。
  • The paradox is that Japan does need serious education reform.矛盾的地方是日本确实需要教育改革。
8 reverberated 3a97b3efd3d8e644bcdffd01038c6cdb     
回响,回荡( reverberate的过去式和过去分词 ); 使反响,使回荡,使反射
参考例句:
  • Her voice reverberated around the hall. 她的声音在大厅里回荡。
  • The roar of guns reverberated in the valley. 炮声响彻山谷。
9 underneath VKRz2     
adj.在...下面,在...底下;adv.在下面
参考例句:
  • Working underneath the car is always a messy job.在汽车底下工作是件脏活。
  • She wore a coat with a dress underneath.她穿着一件大衣,里面套着一条连衣裙。
10 memoir O7Hz7     
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。
11 genre ygPxi     
n.(文学、艺术等的)类型,体裁,风格
参考例句:
  • My favorite music genre is blues.我最喜欢的音乐种类是布鲁斯音乐。
  • Superficially,this Shakespeare's work seems to fit into the same genre.从表面上看, 莎士比亚的这个剧本似乎属于同一类型。
12 precarious Lu5yV     
adj.不安定的,靠不住的;根据不足的
参考例句:
  • Our financial situation had become precarious.我们的财务状况已变得不稳定了。
  • He earned a precarious living as an artist.作为一个艺术家,他过得是朝不保夕的生活。
13 judgment e3xxC     
n.审判;判断力,识别力,看法,意见
参考例句:
  • The chairman flatters himself on his judgment of people.主席自认为他审视人比别人高明。
  • He's a man of excellent judgment.他眼力过人。
本文本内容来源于互联网抓取和网友提交,仅供参考,部分栏目没有内容,如果您有更合适的内容,欢迎点击提交分享给大家。
------分隔线----------------------------
TAG标签:   NPR  美国国家电台  英语听力
顶一下
(0)
0%
踩一下
(0)
0%
最新评论 查看所有评论
发表评论 查看所有评论
请自觉遵守互联网相关的政策法规,严禁发布色情、暴力、反动的言论。
评价:
表情:
验证码:
听力搜索
推荐频道
论坛新贴