美国国家公共电台 NPR In 'Lola's Story,' A Journalist Reveals A Family Secret
时间:2019-01-17 作者:英语课 分类:2017年NPR美国国家公共电台5月
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Alex Tizon carried a secret his entire life. It's one he wrote about in a new cover story in The Atlantic called "Lola's Story." Tizon wrote, quote, "She lived with my family for 56 years. She raised me and my siblings 1 and cooked and cleaned from dawn to dark, always without pay. I was 11," he writes, "a typical American kid, before I realized she was my family's slave."
Lola was a domestic servant who had been with Alex's family going back to his mother's childhood. She came with the Tizons when they moved to the U.S. in 1964 from the Philippines. From the outside, she looked like part of the family, the beloved domestic worker. But Lola was often forced to sleep in hallways or storage spaces. She was forbidden return visits to the Philippines to see her family, her entire world reduced to a single household.
Alex Tizon struggled with this dark part of his family's past his whole life and was only able to put Lola's experience into his own words earlier this year. A few weeks ago, while in the late stages of editing this story, Tizon passed away unexpectedly of natural causes at the age of 57. I spoke 2 with The Atlantic's editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg.
So tell us, how did this woman, Lola, come to live with Alex's family?
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Alex's grandfather essentially 3 came to own Lola, gave Lola as a gift to Alex's mother. This is all back in the Philippines. And Lola came with them to America, stayed with them as, in essence, the family slave. And then Alex essentially - and I use this word advisedly - but Alex inherited her from his dying mother.
MARTIN: People will hear that word slave and project a lot onto that. I mean, it's such an inflammatory word.
GOLDBERG: Sure.
MARTIN: What was her work, and what was enslaving about her existence?
GOLDBERG: Well, the interesting thing here - one of the interesting things to me - is that she wasn't a captive, per se - wasn't in chains. She wasn't locked away.
MARTIN: She could have left of her own volition 4.
GOLDBERG: She could have, but she couldn't have. And that's sort of the point of this story, is that from a very early age, she worked for this family without pay. She lived with this family. When the family moved to America, it was only natural that she would go with them. But she was a slave until the day she died.
MARTIN: Did Alex's family - he has siblings, his mother. Did they love Lola and was it reciprocated 5?
GOLDBERG: I think Lola loved the family, certainly loved the children of the family. The feelings toward the parents are probably more complicated, as you'll see in the piece. I think Alex and his siblings were overwhelmed by some combination of love, guilt 6, a very, very complicated emotional package here.
MARTIN: I mean, you mentioned that she never got a salary. But more than - than that, which is significant in and of itself, she was emotionally abused. I mean, she worked from dawn to dark. She didn't often have a bedroom of her own. Alex describes her sleeping on piles of laundry. She took verbal abuse from both parents.
GOLDBERG: Right. Right.
MARTIN: This was not an easy life, and she felt like she - she didn't really have any choices. She couldn't...
GOLDBERG: No.
MARTIN: ...Exactly walk out.
GOLDBERG: You know - and I've tried to put myself in the shoes of Alex as a writer. One of the reasons it's so hard to get the story out - because he had to confront the true nature of his mother, and the true nature of his father, and this terrible and terrifying arrangement that they had acquiesced 7 to - that they benefited from - for decades. And so imagine you're the writer, and you want to tell this story of the woman who essentially raised you. And you realize that in telling this story, you're telling another story about his mother and her acute moral failings, intellectual failings.
MARTIN: He writes in the piece that, at one point, he just has to separate his relationships. At one point, after his mother has died, he actually takes Lola into his own household...
GOLDBERG: Right.
MARTIN: ...And, quote, unquote, "frees" her, just tells her, just live your life. You don't have to clean.
GOLDBERG: Right.
MARTIN: You don't have to take care of us, just be a part of our family. But when he looks at Lola, he also has to kind of compartmentalize and - and not think about what his mother has done to her.
GOLDBERG: Right. Here are two women who raised him, two women he loved. One was the slave of another. That's complicated.
MARTIN: What were the conversations like when deciding whether or not to put this on the cover of the magazine?
GOLDBERG: Well, he's a beautiful writer, first of all. And his wife, Melissa, told me, after he died - she told me that he had a theory of journalism 8, which is that everyone has within them an epic 9 story. The most normal person, average person, on the street has something within him or her that truly is epic. And this was his epic story.
MARTIN: Editor-in-chief of The Atlantic Magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg. Jeffrey, thanks so much for sharing this.
GOLDBERG: Thank you.
MARTIN: "Lola's Story" by the late Alex Tizon is in the June issue of The Atlantic. It's out today.
- A triplet sleeps amongst its two siblings. 一个三胞胎睡在其两个同胞之间。 来自《简明英汉词典》
- She has no way of tracking the donor or her half-siblings down. 她没办法找到那个捐精者或她的兄弟姐妹。 来自时文部分
- 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。
- Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
- She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。
- We like to think that everything we do and everything we think is a product of our volition.我们常常认为我们所做和所想的一切都出自自己的意愿。
- Makin said Mr Coombes had gone to the police of his own volition.梅金说库姆斯先生是主动去投案的。
- Her passion for him was not reciprocated. 她对他的热情没有得到回应。
- Their attraction to each other as friends is reciprocated. 作为朋友,他们相互吸引着对方。 来自辞典例句
- She tried to cover up her guilt by lying.她企图用谎言掩饰自己的罪行。
- Don't lay a guilt trip on your child about schoolwork.别因为功课责备孩子而使他觉得很内疚。
- Senior government figures must have acquiesced in the cover-up. 政府高级官员必然已经默许掩盖真相。
- After a lot of persuasion,he finally acquiesced. 经过多次劝说,他最终默许了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
- He's a teacher but he does some journalism on the side.他是教师,可还兼职做一些新闻工作。
- He had an aptitude for journalism.他有从事新闻工作的才能。