在线英语听力室

VOA慢速英语20061211b

时间:2006-12-18 16:00:00

搜索关注在线英语听力室公众号:tingroom,领取免费英语资料大礼包。

(单词翻译)

THIS IS AMERICA - Coming to America: Writers and the Immigrant StoryBy Doreen Baingana

Broadcast: Monday, December 11, 2006

VOICE ONE:

Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I'm Steve Ember.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Barbara Klein. Our subject this week -- writers and the immigrant experience, revisited. Recently we talked about four writers and the influence of their ties to Latin America and the Caribbean. This time it is the Middle East, Africa and Europe.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:


Elmaz Abinader

The author and poet Elmaz Abinader grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania, in the northeastern United States. Her parents came from Lebanon. Her family spoke1 mostly Arabic at home.

At school, she says, other children insulted her for being different. She looked for some connection between her two lives.

As she tells it, everything changed when she went to college. She took control of her identity. She began to cook Middle Eastern foods and to listen to Arabic music with her friends. She also began to write about her grandmother.

In college in the nineteen seventies, Elmaz Abinader studied writing. But she says most of the American writers she studied had European roots. She felt that her culture was not welcome in American writing.

VOICE TWO:

At some point, she read a book that, in her words, made the difference. The book was The Woman Warrior2: Memoirs3 of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. It was written by the Chinese-American writer Maxine Hong Kingston. In it, she tells stories about her Chinese grandmother, and about children considered too American for their immigrant family.

Reading The Woman Warrior led Elmaz Abinader to read works by others outside the center of American culture. These included African-American and Latino writers. She found a community of people like her. People learning to live in two cultures.

VOICE ONE:

Elmaz Abinader earned a doctorate4 in writing. Her first book, in nineteen ninety-one, was Children of the Roojme: A Family's Journey From Lebanon. The family she based it on was her own.

She has also written a collection of poetry called In the Country of My Dreams. And Elmaz Abinader writes and performs plays. Her play Country of Origin is about the struggles of three Arab-American women. Music in the play mixes traditional Middle East sounds with present-day jazz.

VOICE TWO:

Elmaz Abinader says she began to understand years ago that as a writer, she was also an activist5. Today she is a professor of creative writing at Mills College in Oakland, California. She says a beautiful story or a good poem can affect a reader more than any speech.

Her aim, she says, is to make the story of Arab-Americans as important as that of any other group in the United States.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:


Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Many new immigrants to America are from Africa. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is from Nigeria. She has written short stories and a book, Purple Hibiscus. She won the two thousand four Hurston/Wright Legacy6 Award for a first work of fiction. This national award honors writers of African ancestry7. Purple Hibiscus has also been nominated for international honors, including the Commonwealth8 Writers Prize and the Orange Prize.

VOICE TWO:

Chimamanda Adichie grew up in the university town of Nsukka. Her parents were professors. She came to the United States in nineteen ninety-six to go to college. She was nineteen years old.

She says Nigeria will always be her home, but she needs distance to be able to write about the country better. In fact, she says that sometimes, when she is back in Nigeria, she writes about Nigerians in America.

VOICE ONE:

Purple Hibiscus is set in Nigeria. It is about a young woman growing up in a troubled family while the country faces political unrest. There are some similarities to real-life events. She says the stories of people who suffered must be told.

Purple Hibiscus also deals with modern religion in Nigeria and explores the clash with African tradition.

Another book about Nigeria by Chimamanda Adichie is Half of a Yellow Sun. This book is about the attempt to establish an independent republic of Biafra in Nigeria in the nineteen sixties.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:


Aleksandar Hemon

In two thousand four, the writer Aleksandar Hemon received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. These are known as genius grants. They go to individuals who show great creativity in their work. MacArthur Fellows receive five hundred thousand dollars over five years to spend as they wish.

Aleksandar Hemon is the author of The Question of Bruno and Nowhere Man. Both books are about young men born in Sarajevo. Their lives are changed by the war in the former Yugoslavia in the early nineteen nineties.

VOICE ONE:

Like the men in his books, Aleksandar Hemon grew up in Sarajevo. He became a reporter and writer. He came to the United States in nineteen ninety-two as part of a cultural exchange program. He was twenty-seven years old. After the Bosnian war started, he could not return home. So he stayed in America and settled in Chicago.

He also writes about displaced people who do not feel part of any community. He says telling stories is one way to record the old life that is lost, perhaps in war. He says stories should be told about wars and genocide so that the official version of history is not the only one that exists.

VOICE TWO:

Aleksandar Hemon wrote his first book in English after three years in the United States. Book critics have praised his expert and beautiful use of the language. Yet he spoke only a little English when he arrived in the country. With his limited English, he could only get low-paying work. So he read books in English to improve his language skills.

He has said that one of the most difficult things for him as a new immigrant was this: Recognizing the difference between what he wanted to say and what he was really saying. He says this changed the way he thought about the idea of self. And it changed his writing. He saw that a person was made up of many selves.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:


Andrei Codrescu

Andrei Codrescu has published many books of poetry. He has also written about his life and his travels. But he is best known for his commentaries on American culture on National Public Radio. He lives in New Orleans and is a professor of writing at Louisiana State University. He also heads the literary magazine Exquisite9 Corpse10, now published on the Internet.

Andrei Codrescu was born in Sibu, Romania, in nineteen forty-six. When he was nineteen years old, he and his mother left the country. At that time, Israel was buying freedom for Jews in communist Romania. The former West Germany was doing the same for ethnic11 Germans.

But instead of going to Israel, Andrei Codrescu and his mother came to the United States. He says he now feels more American than anything else. He became an American citizen in nineteen eighty-one.

VOICE TWO:

Andrei Codrescu began to write poetry when he was sixteen. He says Romanians have a strong love for poetry, and a language that expresses images well. He also says writing poetry was a rebellious12 act because the communists banned a lot of writing.

Years later, as an American, he recorded the end of communist rule in Romania. That happened in nineteen eighty-nine. He wrote a book called The Hole in the Flag: A Romanian Exile's Story of Return and Revolution.

VOICE ONE:

Andrei Codrescu has also traveled around the United States and observed life. His film Road Scholar is about unusual communities. He wrote a book of the same name. He says his travels taught him that people with differences can live together.

In two thousand six, Andrei Codrescu published a collection of essays about his adopted hometown in Louisiana -- New Orleans. He wrote it with love, laughter and longing13 for the city after the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in August of two thousand five. The book is called New Orleans, Mon Amour.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO

Our program was written by Doreen Baingana and produced by Caty Weaver14. To find our earlier program about writers and the immigrant experience, go to www.unsv.com. I'm Barbara Klein.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Steve Ember. Join us again next week for THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English.

---

Editor's Note: Doreen Baingana, a part-time writer in Special English, is an award-winning author from Uganda.


分享到:


点击收听单词发音收听单词发音  

1 spoke XryyC     
n.(车轮的)辐条;轮辐;破坏某人的计划;阻挠某人的行动 v.讲,谈(speak的过去式);说;演说;从某种观点来说
参考例句:
  • They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
  • The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。
2 warrior YgPww     
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。
3 memoirs f752e432fe1fefb99ab15f6983cd506c     
n.回忆录;回忆录传( mem,自oir的名词复数)
参考例句:
  • Her memoirs were ghostwritten. 她的回忆录是由别人代写的。
  • I watched a trailer for the screenplay of his memoirs. 我看过以他的回忆录改编成电影的预告片。 来自《简明英汉词典》
4 doctorate fkEzt     
n.(大学授予的)博士学位
参考例句:
  • He hasn't enough credits to get his doctorate.他的学分不够取得博士学位。
  • Where did she do her doctorate?她在哪里攻读博士?
5 activist gyAzO     
n.活动分子,积极分子
参考例句:
  • He's been a trade union activist for many years.多年来他一直是工会的积极分子。
  • He is a social activist in our factory.他是我厂的社会活动积极分子。
6 legacy 59YzD     
n.遗产,遗赠;先人(或过去)留下的东西
参考例句:
  • They are the most precious cultural legacy our forefathers left.它们是我们祖先留下来的最宝贵的文化遗产。
  • He thinks the legacy is a gift from the Gods.他认为这笔遗产是天赐之物。
7 ancestry BNvzf     
n.祖先,家世
参考例句:
  • Their ancestry settled the land in 1856.他们的祖辈1856年在这块土地上定居下来。
  • He is an American of French ancestry.他是法国血统的美国人。
8 commonwealth XXzyp     
n.共和国,联邦,共同体
参考例句:
  • He is the chairman of the commonwealth of artists.他是艺术家协会的主席。
  • Most of the members of the Commonwealth are nonwhite.英联邦的许多成员国不是白人国家。
9 exquisite zhez1     
adj.精美的;敏锐的;剧烈的,感觉强烈的
参考例句:
  • I was admiring the exquisite workmanship in the mosaic.我当时正在欣赏镶嵌画的精致做工。
  • I still remember the exquisite pleasure I experienced in Bali.我依然记得在巴厘岛所经历的那种剧烈的快感。
10 corpse JYiz4     
n.尸体,死尸
参考例句:
  • What she saw was just an unfeeling corpse.她见到的只是一具全无感觉的尸体。
  • The corpse was preserved from decay by embalming.尸体用香料涂抹以防腐烂。
11 ethnic jiAz3     
adj.人种的,种族的,异教徒的
参考例句:
  • This music would sound more ethnic if you played it in steel drums.如果你用钢鼓演奏,这首乐曲将更具民族特色。
  • The plan is likely only to aggravate ethnic frictions.这一方案很有可能只会加剧种族冲突。
12 rebellious CtbyI     
adj.造反的,反抗的,难控制的
参考例句:
  • They will be in danger if they are rebellious.如果他们造反,他们就要发生危险。
  • Her reply was mild enough,but her thoughts were rebellious.她的回答虽然很温和,但她的心里十分反感。
13 longing 98bzd     
n.(for)渴望
参考例句:
  • Hearing the tune again sent waves of longing through her.再次听到那首曲子使她胸中充满了渴望。
  • His heart burned with longing for revenge.他心中燃烧着急欲复仇的怒火。
14 weaver LgWwd     
n.织布工;编织者
参考例句:
  • She was a fast weaver and the cloth was very good.她织布织得很快,而且布的质量很好。
  • The eager weaver did not notice my confusion.热心的纺织工人没有注意到我的狼狈相。

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。