PBS高端访谈:边境生活回忆录（在线收听）

Judy Woodruff: With immigration at the U.S. southern border very much in the news, we finish tonight with a perspective that takes a longer view. Jeffrey Brown recently spoke with playwright Octavio Solis about a new memoir chronicling his childhood along that border.

Octavio Solis: They're naive art painted by an artist for a specific person.

Jeffrey Brown: They're called retablos, small, simple paintings of Mexican folk art, often religious in nature.

Octavio Solis: Like, in this one here, this man has been stung by a bee.

Jeffrey Brown: Octavio Solis has collected them for years.

Octavio Solis: Each one of these is like a flash fiction story.

Jeffrey Brown: Flash fiction?

Octavio Solis: Because it's all encapsulated in one image with a little writing in it.

Jeffrey Brown: "Retablos" is also the name of Solis' latest work, a collection of stories about his childhood along the Texas-Mexico border.

Octavio Solis: That's what revisiting El Paso is like for me, like walking into a retablo with a rusty surface for a sky and misremembered family and friends for saints and supplicants, and the lost, distilled moments of my border past for miracles.

Jeffrey Brown: Octavio Solis, author of more than 20 plays regularly performed around the country, is one of the leading Latino voices in the theater.

We're not on the border anymore, are we? You're not.

Octavio Solis: Oh, no, not at all.

Jeffrey Brown: He lives in rural Oregon now, but in "Retablos," he looks back at himself as what he calls a skinny brown kid.

Octavio Solis: That's what I was growing up there, and with everything that comes with it, all the hang ups that come with being a young man

who's unsure of who he is and what he is as an American growing up in El Paso, Texas.

Jeffrey Brown: You describe a family that is in some ways living on the border of legality as well.

Octavio Solis: Oh, yes.

Jeffrey Brown: You're born in the U.S., your mother not, but she becomes legal. Your father's not at first.

Octavio Solis: We saw people crossing all the time around our household. They looked exactly like us, but they weren't us. We always found a way to kind of create distance. But we were so much like them. And there was, that distancing didn't work at some point, because Border Patrol would always stop us and ask us for like, where do you live? Can you recite the Pledge of Allegiance to us?

Jeffrey Brown: So, you always felt that?

Octavio Solis: I always felt that. That never left me.

Jeffrey Brown: Those tensions have often been a theme in his work, including a new version of "Don Quixote" that was staged this summer at the California Shakespeare Theater.

Actor: To fight for the unemployed.

Octavio Solis: Using the "Quixote" spine, the spine of that story, I was able to tell a new story about the border and about the Border Patrol and about the immigration issues that we're dealing with today. I feel it incumbent on me, in these times, to address the issues that I feel are endangering Latinos in this country.

Jeffrey Brown: So your Quixote is going through that landscape on the border?

Octavio Solis: And instead of fighting, tilting at windmills, he's tilting at surveillance drones that the Border Patrol puts out around the desert there.

Jeffrey Brown: Recently, Solis had a chance to reach and teach an audience of millions, as part of a team of cultural consultants hired by Pixar for the blockbuster hit "Coco," an animated film about a boy and his family in Mexico.

Octavio Solis: They had us look at every aspect of the film. We became the firewall between something that could be cooked up just for sales and something that was authentic to the culture.

Jeffrey Brown: Authentic to the culture, meaning?

Octavio Solis: To the culture, meaning a story that would accurately depict the Latino, the Mexico culture in Mexico in the film. So...

Jeffrey Brown: Which doesn't often happen.

Octavio Solis: Doesn't often happen at all. And films seldom bring consultants in to say, to check, is the dialogue sounding authentic? Is this correct Spanish? Would a character dress this way?

Jeffrey Brown: Solis says he was pleased with the final result, and the popularity it enjoyed.

Octavio Solis: It was a way also for general American audiences to relate to someone who's colored like me in a way that is so immediate and visceral and humane. That's what's so puzzling and so disturbing about the times that we're living in, that a film like "Coco" can attract such a wide audience, and yet at the same time, a lot of that audience is demonizing us. It's really, it's very hard. It's very hard to sort of see that. I don't understand.

Jeffrey Brown: These days, with wife Jeanne and their daughter Gracie, there are chickens and goats to tend, and also new plays on the horizon. One is called "Mother Road," a kind of sequel to John Steinbeck's classic story of migrant workers, "The Grapes of Wrath." The nearby Oregon Shakespeare Festival will stage it as a world premiere next summer. For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Jeffrey Brown in Medford, Oregon.

朱迪·伍德拉夫：美国南部边境的移民问题已经成了各大媒体的焦点，那么今晚接的最后，我们就来讨论一下这个需要长远眼光看待的问题。最近，杰弗里·布朗采访了剧作家奥克塔维奥·索利斯，主题是他最新面世的一部回忆录，里面按时间顺序记叙了他在边境线上的童年生活。

奥克塔维奥·索利斯：这是一位艺术家为某个人画的稚拙艺术。

杰弗里·布朗：这是组画，是墨西哥民间艺术里简单又不大的那种画，通常本质是宗教意味的。

奥克塔维奥·索利斯：比如，这幅画里，这名男子被一只蜜蜂叮了。

杰弗里·布朗：奥克塔维奥·索利斯把他们珍藏了许多年。

奥克塔维奥·索利斯：这里的每一幅画都像是一部微小说。

杰弗里·布朗：微小说？

奥克塔维奥·索利斯：所有东西都融入到一幅画面里，配上一点文字。

杰弗里·布朗：索利斯的最新作品也是组画，讲述了他孩童时代在得克萨斯州和墨西哥边境一连串的故事。

奥克塔维奥·索利斯：对于我来说，重回厄尔巴索这个故地的感觉，就像走进了一幅组画，天空暗沉，错把亲朋好友当成了圣贤和乞丐，这是我遗失的过往，他们是我过去边境生活各种苦难的净化版。

杰弗里·布朗：奥克塔维奥·索利斯曾写过20个剧本，经常在全国各地上演。他是拉丁美洲在话剧领域屈指可数的宝藏。我们不再在边境生活了，对吗？是的，不再。

奥克塔维奥·索利斯：哦不，根本不是这样。

杰弗里·布朗：他现在生活在俄勒冈州的农村地带，但在组画中，他回顾的时候，眼中的自己是一个骨瘦如柴、棕色皮肤的孩子。

奥克塔维奥·索利斯：我生活在边境的时候就是这个样子，边境应该有的元素，我都体验过了，也经历过年轻人有过的迷惘。我曾经不知道自己是谁，也不知道应该怎样评价一个在得克萨斯州厄尔巴索长大的美国人。

杰弗里·布朗：您描述的那个家庭，从某些方面来讲，虽然生活在边境，但却是合法的。

奥克塔维奥·索利斯：是的，没错。

杰弗里·布朗：您出生在美国，但您的母亲不是，而她的身份却是合法的。您的父亲一开始也不是。

奥克塔维奥·索利斯：我们家附近经常人来人往。他们跟我们很像，但他们并不是我们。我们总是会找到方法拉开距离。但我们其实很相似。而且有时候拉开距离并不管用，因为边境巡逻队总是会拦住我们，问我们一些问题，比如：你们在哪儿住？能跟我们背一下效忠誓言吗？

杰弗里·布朗：所以您总是有这种感觉，是吗？

奥克塔维奥·索利斯：我总是有这种感觉，时时刻刻都是如此。

杰弗里·布朗：这种紧张感一直是他作品的主题，包括新版《唐吉诃德》。这部作品今年夏天还在加州的莎士比亚剧院上演了。

演员：我们要为失业者抗争。

奥克塔维奥·索利斯：带着唐吉坷德的骨气和故事的精神，我就能讲述一个新的故事，内容与边境和边境巡逻队有关，与我们今天处理的移民问题有关。我觉得这是我在当今这个时代的责任——解决拉丁美洲人在这个国家感到危机的一些问题。

杰弗里·布朗：所以您的唐吉坷德是经历过各种边境磨难的，是吗？

奥克塔维奥·索利斯：他没有在风车旁倾斜，却在边境巡逻队放在沙漠附近的巡查无人机倾斜了。

杰弗里·布朗：最近，索利斯有机会接触到很多观众，并给他们上课，他是文化顾问中一员，这些文化顾问为皮克斯效力，创造出了鸿篇巨制的《寻梦环游记》。这部动画电影讲述的是一个男孩的故事，他和他的家人都生活在墨西哥。

奥克塔维奥·索利斯：电影展示了方方面面的内容。我们成了一道防火墙，两边分别是商业化的东西和真正的文化。

杰弗里·布朗：您说的“真正的文化”是什么意思呢？

奥克塔维奥·索利斯：是说故事能准确地展现拉丁美洲人的生活和墨西哥文化。

杰弗里·布朗：但这种情况不会常有。

奥克塔维奥·索利斯：几乎就不会有。影片在制作过程中从来不会把文化顾问叫来，让他们检查对话听起来是否纯正。这个西班牙语说的对吗？这样穿着对吗？

杰弗里·布朗：索利斯说他对结果很满意，对影片的普及度也很满意。

奥克塔维奥·索利斯：这也是一种方式，让普通的美国观众能跟我这样肤色的人以人性本能的方式建立联系，而且速度很快。这就让我们对我们所处的时代产生了困惑，《寻梦环游记》竟然会有如此多的受众。而且与此同时，很多观众把我们妖魔化了。很难看到这种情况，我不太明白。

杰弗里·布朗：最近，他跟妻子珍妮以及女儿格雷西一起，他们一起喂鸡和山羊，一起看地平线上的景色。一个名为《母亲路》，是约翰·斯坦贝克讲述农民工故事经典电影《愤怒的葡萄》的续集。明年夏天，勒冈莎士比亚节上将全球首映这部影片。以上是杰弗里·布朗从俄勒冈州德福德发回的《新闻一小时》。