美国国家公共电台 NPR 'The Book Of Joan' Recasts A Historic Heroine — In Space

 

LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

What does it mean to be human? In Lidia Yuknavitch's new novel, what's left of the human race is orbiting above the earth. Sexless and ageless prisoners in a technological¹ hell. Their lives preserved through growing limbs and grafting² skin. Presiding over it all is a one-time billionaire celebrity³ who evolved through media and technology into a despot. His adversary⁴ is a girl called Joan.

Lidia Yuknavitch joins us now from the studios of Oregon Public Broadcasting in Portland to talk about her new novel "Book Of Joan." Welcome.

LIDIA YUKNAVITCH: My pleasure to be here.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: So this is a retelling of the Joan of Arc story. Can you explain how you adapted it? Who is Joan in your book?

YUKNAVITCH: Well, in this revisioning, she's an eco-terrorist of sorts. Although, that name would depend on your point of view.

(LAUGHTER)

YUKNAVITCH: She has allegiance to the planet and to diversity on the planet, including plants and animals and people. And as the story progresses, her allegiance turns into a question that's something like what you mentioned, what's the worth of humans, and what's our relationship to the planet?

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Why was it an important story to retell do you think in your universe, the one that you have, this dystopian world?

YUKNAVITCH: There were several tensions on my mind when I was making the story. One of those tensions is climate change, which is on everyone's mind. But a couple other ones were celebrity culture and reality TV and a kind of media super saturation⁵ of culture.

I was also interested in gender⁶ tensions and diversity tensions. And all of those tensions kind of combined with my lifelong obsession⁷ with this figure of Joan of Arc, this girl warrior⁸ who first emblazoned herself on my brain in Catholic school (laughter) when I was about 11.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: What was it about Joan of Arc that appealed to you?

YUKNAVITCH: This figure, for me, was sort of like a rebel girl or a girl capable of fighting. And like so many of us, I was raised in an abusive household. So I needed a figure like that to, you know, help me get out of my house and help me believe in something that would give me spirit and fire. And so that's how she got born in my imagination.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: When you talk about celebrity culture, you mentioned that that was one of the threads that drew you to this particular story. How does it play out in this novel?

YUKNAVITCH: There is a billionaire celebrity TV host who captures the imagination of the entire country. And then, though nobody could have predicted it, this person becomes worldwide famous in a kind of commodity way. And though nobody's expecting it, that turns into a global power play that leads to war quicker than anybody thought it could. And what's frightening to me is that we're living in a present tense that carries a figure a little bit like that even though I wrote this about two and a half, three years ago.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: So you're describing what has happened to Earth. It's been decimated. And then people go into space, and it changes humanity fundamentally. Can you explain what it means to be physically⁹ human in this book? They don't look like we look.

YUKNAVITCH: They don't. They're not utterly¹⁰ divorced from us. But there have been geo-catastrophic (ph) changes that have affected¹¹ morphology. And so those who are able to escape Earth and ascend¹² live in a kind of space station situation. And they're the elite¹³, the wealthiest of what's left of earth. And the big change in morphology, which has happened because of radical¹⁴ radiation, for one thing, is that they're sexless and that their skin has no identifiable pigmentation except that it's leaning toward white like a piece of paper.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: How does race and gender then manifest itself in this world? What did you want to say about that by making them sort of colorless and genderless?

YUKNAVITCH: I didn't entirely¹⁵ lose color and gender, but I sort of flattened¹⁶ it out to the construct of white versus¹⁷ everything else in terms of diversity. And I was trying to unbuild (ph) the very constructs themselves of the gender story and the race story and the God story and even the love story to put them back into smaller units we could just look at and ask each other, what have we done to each other and the planet?

GARCIA-NAVARRO: What is love in this book? You talk...

YUKNAVITCH: (Laughter).

GARCIA-NAVARRO: No, you talk about how, you know, it's not gender-based love or even sexual love. How do people manifest love in this book?

YUKNAVITCH: I'm laughing because, for me, that's probably the most important question of the story - the love story of this book. I feel as if love, too, is trapped in an old kind of dead commodified script that has been Hollywoodized (ph). (Laughter) And so if your love doesn't fit the story you see on TV or at the movies, then you're somehow failing, which means we're all failing all the time (laughter) because there's no way to hit that romanticized version of love.

And in the "Joan" book, I sort of put as the question in the front of my mind, what if we loved the planet and all being, including animals and each other, the way we claim we love our husbands or wives or lovers or children or parents? What if we redistributed that kind of love that we claim we feel for the one as an energy? Is that successful in the story? I don't know, but it was enough for me to kind of shake it and raise it as a question and more than one place in the story.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Lidia Yuknavitch, her new novel is "The Book Of Joan." She joined us from the studios of Oregon Public Broadcasting in Portland. Thank you so much.

YUKNAVITCH: My pleasure.

1 technological   

adj.技术的；工艺的

参考例句：

• A successful company must keep up with the pace of technological change.一家成功的公司必须得跟上技术变革的步伐。
• Today,the pace of life is increasing with technological advancements.当今， 随着科技进步，生活节奏不断增快。

2 grafting   

嫁接法，移植法

参考例句：

• Even grafting new blood vessels in place of the diseased coronary arteries has been tried. 甚至移植新血管代替不健康的冠状动脉的方法都已经试过。
• Burns can often be cured by grafting on skin from another part of the same body. 烧伤常常可以用移植身体其它部位的皮肤来治愈。

3 celebrity   

n.名人，名流；著名，名声，名望

参考例句：

• Tom found himself something of a celebrity. 汤姆意识到自己已小有名气了。
• He haunted famous men, hoping to get celebrity for himself. 他常和名人在一起, 希望借此使自己获得名气。

4 adversary   

adj.敌手，对手

参考例句：

• He saw her as his main adversary within the company.他将她视为公司中主要的对手。
• They will do anything to undermine their adversary's reputation.他们会不择手段地去损害对手的名誉。

5 saturation   

n.饱和(状态)；浸透

参考例句：

• The company's sales are now close to saturation in many western countries.这家公司的产品销售量在许多西方国家已接近饱和。
• Road traffic has reached saturation point.公路交通已达到饱和点。

6 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。

7 obsession   

n.困扰，无法摆脱的思想(或情感)

参考例句：

• I was suffering from obsession that my career would be ended.那时的我陷入了我的事业有可能就此终止的困扰当中。
• She would try to forget her obsession with Christopher.她会努力忘记对克里斯托弗的迷恋。

8 warrior   

n.勇士，武士，斗士

参考例句：

• The young man is a bold warrior.这个年轻人是个很英勇的武士。
• A true warrior values glory and honor above life.一个真正的勇士珍视荣誉胜过生命。

9 physically   

adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律

参考例句：

• He was out of sorts physically,as well as disordered mentally.他浑身不舒服，心绪也很乱。
• Every time I think about it I feel physically sick.一想起那件事我就感到极恶心。

10 utterly   

adv.完全地，绝对地

参考例句：

• Utterly devoted to the people,he gave his life in saving his patients.他忠于人民，把毕生精力用于挽救患者的生命。
• I was utterly ravished by the way she smiled.她的微笑使我完全陶醉了。

11 affected   

adj.不自然的，假装的

参考例句：

• She showed an affected interest in our subject.她假装对我们的课题感到兴趣。
• His manners are affected.他的态度不自然。

12 ascend   

vi.渐渐上升，升高；vt.攀登，登上

参考例句：

• We watched the airplane ascend higher and higher.我们看着飞机逐渐升高。
• We ascend in the order of time and of development.我们按时间和发展顺序向上溯。

13 elite   

n.精英阶层；实力集团；adj.杰出的，卓越的

参考例句：

• The power elite inside the government is controlling foreign policy.政府内部的一群握有实权的精英控制着对外政策。
• We have a political elite in this country.我们国家有一群政治精英。

14 radical   

n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的

参考例句：

• The patient got a radical cure in the hospital.病人在医院得到了根治。
• She is radical in her demands.她的要求十分偏激。

15 entirely   

ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The fire was entirely caused by their neglect of duty. 那场火灾完全是由于他们失职而引起的。
• His life was entirely given up to the educational work. 他的一生统统献给了教育工作。

16 flattened   

[医]（水）平扁的，弄平的

参考例句：

• She flattened her nose and lips against the window. 她把鼻子和嘴唇紧贴着窗户。
• I flattened myself against the wall to let them pass. 我身体紧靠着墙让他们通过。

17 versus   

prep.以…为对手，对；与…相比之下

参考例句：

• The big match tonight is England versus Spain.今晚的大赛是英格兰对西班牙。
• The most exciting game was Harvard versus Yale.最富紧张刺激的球赛是哈佛队对耶鲁队。