譚恩美,Amy Tan,美籍華人女作家,代表作《喜福會》(The Joy Luck Club)連續(xù)40周登上紐約暢銷書排行,獲得全美圖書獎,還被改編成電影。本期公開課,滬江網(wǎng)校Sophie老師選擇她作為自己公開課的主題,要帶我們,從譚恩美的文字里,感受什么叫愛與理解。你想知道這一次課上討論了些什么嗎?趕緊來聽現(xiàn)場實錄音頻吧:

《喜福會》精華賞析

The old woman remembered a swan she had bought many years ago in Shanghai for a foolish sum. This bird, boasted the market vendor, was once a duck that stretched its neck in hopes of becoming a goose, and now look! –it is too beautiful to eat.

Then the woman and the swan sailed across an ocean many thousands of li wide, stretching their necks toward America. On her journey she cooed to the swan: “In America I will have a daughter just like me. But over there nobody will say her worth is measured by the loudness of her husband’s belch. Over there nobody will look down on her, because I will make her speak only perfect American English. And over there she will always be too full to swallow any sorrow! She will know my meaning, because I will give her this swan—a creature that became more than what was hoped for.”

But when she arrived in the new country, the immigration officials pulled her swan away from her, leaving the woman fluttering her arms and with only one swan feather for a memory. And then she had to fill out so many forms she forgot why she had come and what she had left behind.

Now the woman was old. And she had a daughter who grew up speaking only English and swallowing more Coca-Cola than sorrow.

For a long time now the woman had wanted to give her daughter the single swan feather and tell her, “This feather may look worthless, but it comes from afar and carries with it all my good intentions.” And she waited, year after year, for the day she could tell her daughter this in perfect American English.

書中的中國元素
Auntie Lin explains how mad she got at the store clerk who refused to let her return a skirt with a broken zipper. “I was chiszle,” she says, still fuming, “mad to death.”

Fume vi. 冒煙;發(fā)怒

金木水火土五大元素:

Each person is made of five elements:

Too much fire and you had a bad temper.
Too little wood and you bent too quickly to listen to other people’s ideas, unable to stand on your own.
Too much water and you flowed in too many directions:

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