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The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American
做一个美国人意味着什么
James Baldwin
詹姆斯鲍德温
It is a complex fate to be an American, Henry James observed, and the principal discovery an American writer makes in Europe is just how complex this fate is.
亨利詹姆斯曾经说过，"身为一个美国人是一种复杂玄妙的命运。"而一位作家在欧洲作出的最重大的发现就是这种命运究竟复杂到何种程度。
America’s history, her aspirations, her peculiar triumphs, her even more peculiar defeats, and her position in the world–yesterday and today-are all so profoundly and stubbornly unique that the very word America remains a new, almost completely undefined and extremely controversial proper noun.
美国的历史，其远大志向，其不同凡响的辉煌成就，还有她那更加不同凡响的挫折失败。以及她在世界上的地位--不论是过去还是现在…都是那么深不可测而又无可更改地独一无二，以至于"美国"这个词至今仍是一个陌生的、几乎可以说是完全没有明确定义的、且具有极大争议性的专有名词。
No one in the world seems to know exactly what it describes, not even we motley millions who call ourselves Americans.
世界上似乎还没有人确切地知道这个词的含义，就连我们这些五颜六色、千千万万自称为美国人的人也不例外。
I left America because I doubted my ability to survive the fury of the color problem here. (Sometimes I still do.)
我当初离开美国是因为我曾怀疑自己能否经受住这儿的有色人种问题的狂风暴雨的冲击。(现在我仍然时不时地这样怀疑。)
I wanted to prevent myself from becoming merely a Negro; or even, merely a Negro writer.
我想使自己不至于仅仅成为一个黑人，或是仅仅只成为一个黑人作家。
I wanted to find out in what way the specialness of my experience could be made to connect me with other people instead of dividing me from them.
我想寻求一种什么途径。来使自己的生活经历的特殊性把自己与他人联系起来而不是分离开来。
(I was as isolated from Negroes as I was from whites, which is what happens when a Negro begins, at bottom, to believe what white people say about him.)
(我同黑人之间也产生了隔阂，就像我同白人之间的隔阂一样严重，当一个黑人开始真正地相信白人对黑人的评价时，常常就会发生这样的情况。)
