Through him I met other struggling artists, like Joe Delaney, a veteran painter from Knoxville, Tennessee. Often Joe lacked food money, so he'd visit a neighborhood butcher who would give him big bones with small pieces of meat, and a grocer who would hand him some withered vegetables. That's all Joe needed to make his favorite soup.
通过他,我认识了一些正在苦苦奋斗的艺术家,比如乔·德莱尼,绘画多年,来自田纳西的诺克斯维尔。乔经常穷得连食物都买不起,所以他会去附近的一家肉店,那屠夫会给些沾着肉末的大骨头;他还去杂货店,店主会给他一些蔫了的蔬菜。用这些,乔就可以做他喜爱的汤了。
Another Village neighbor was a handsome young singer who ran a struggling restaurant. Rumor had it that if a customer ordered steak, the singer would dash to a supermarket across the street to buy one. His name was Harry Belafonte.
村里还有一位邻居,是个英俊的年轻歌手,开一家生意清淡的餐馆。据说,要是顾客点了牛扒,这歌手就会冲到街对面的超市里买一份回来。他的名字叫哈里·贝拉方特。
People like Delaney and Belafonte became role models for me. I learned that you had to make sacrifices and live creatively to keep working at your dreams. That's what living in the Shadowland is all about.
德莱尼和贝拉方特等人成了我的楷模。我懂得了,要追求梦想,就得做出牺牲,有创意地生活。在梦想的阴影里生活就是这样的。
As I absorbed the lesson, I gradually began to sell my articles. I was writing about what many people were talking about then: civil rights, black Americans and Africa. Soon, like birds flying south, my thoughts were drawn back to my childhood. In the silence of my room, I heard the voices of Grandma, Cousin Georgia, Aunt Plus, Aunt Liz and Aunt Till as they told stories about our family and slavery.
我品味着这个教训,这时我文章的销路也慢慢好起来。我写的是当时街头巷尾大众谈论的话题:公民权利,美国黑人,非洲。很快,就像南归的鸟儿一样,我的思绪回到了童年。在寂静的房间里,我仿佛可以听见亲人的声音,祖母、乔治亚表姐、普卢思阿姨、莉兹阿姨、蒂尔阿姨,在向我讲述我们的家族历史和奴隶制度。
These were stories that black Americans had tended to avoid before, and so I mostly kept them to myself. But one day at lunch with editors of Reader's Digest, I told these stories of my grandmother and aunts and cousins. I said that I had a dream to trace my family's history to the first African brought to these shores in chains. I left that lunch with a contract that would help support my research and writing for nine years.
以前,美国黑人对这些故事避而不谈,所以我也很少向别人说起。但有一天,我与《读者文摘》的编辑们共进午餐时,我讲了祖母、阿姨和表姐她们的故事。我说,我有一个梦想,就是要追溯我的家族史,找到那戴着伽锁来到美国海岸的第一个非洲人。午餐结束时,我已经得到一份合同,资助我的调查与写作,为期九年。