讲的是三个在美国的中国人
一个是ABC(American born Chinese）
一个已经去了几年
一个刚到
ABC很歧视那个FOB(Fish off Boat）
也很痛恨自己的中国血统
然后Eric就讲了ABC的生活状态
讲了他从小的经历和感受
然后给我们看了他大学写的这首诗
他朗诵的时候很快也并没有很多感情
不知道是不是在掩饰内心的悲伤
我没办法听清楚每一句的意思
但是却觉得很难受
后来自己仔细读的时候
却缺少当初那种感动
也许，他的声音里仍然暗暗传达着一些东西
我开始想象这样一个尴尬的人
在中国和美国都同样缺少认同感
过着怎样一种生活？
为了证明中国人不只是math和science狂人
去学音乐和文学
为了摆脱Chinese的身份
他拒绝Chinese food
拒绝中文
甚至我怀疑他也拒绝他的父母
因为Pheobe告诉我他从小住寄宿学校
爸妈之间讲中文但对他讲英文
白人不会真正喜欢他的黄皮肤
妈妈让他找个中国女孩子
可中国女孩子总跟着白人跑
他一直单身
不知是什么原因
一直到大学
他才开始了解关于中国的点点滴滴
这次来中国
也是这个目的吧
我不知道他对于这样一个陌生但深深烙印在自己血液里的国度是什么感觉
也许就像隔着玻璃看着家园
却无法触摸
不说了
诗在下面
自己看吧
Confessions
As performed at the National Collegiate Poetry Slam, 2001
When my friends come and visit
it’s custom now for them to stop, sniff, and say,
“your house smells like rice”
which of course I wouldn’t know
because I live here;
so I believe them and reply
“must be the slanty eyes.”
I wasn’t always Asian.
When I was 8 years old and the other kids were just
beginning to see color
I had to take the Asian entrance exam.
I failed three times:
first because I couldn’t cook fried rice,
second because I didn’t know Kung-Fu
and third because my white friends always beat me
at ping-pong.
But now I’m Chinese,
passed with flying colors
thanks to the color of my skin
and now everyone asks me
to say something in Chinese for them
like:
“Mu gu gai pan”
“Kung pao chicken”
“Lucky Happy Shimp-Flied Kitchen.”
. . .
Some days I try not to be Asian:
When I was 17 I took a half-Jamaican girl to prom
(proudly scandalized my mom)
but then everyone called me a rotten banana
black on the inside but still—
yellow on the outside.
I wanted to be a peach:
flesh-colored
and deep inside
but
All Asians may look alike
but we certainly don’t look white.
My mother asks me when I’ll get a Chinese girlfriend
preferably pre-med, she says,
and doesn’t seem to understand
that Asian girls only go for white guys
because they’re deep and dangerous
and have larger—
But I’m supposed to know all the Chinese girls anyway—
people always ask me
“Do you know I-Chen Ching?
Ching Chong Chang?
Halle Berry?
Well actually she/he’s Korean/Japanese/Vietnamese/Mexican
but I thought you might know her/him anyways.”
I do know every Asian in the city:
It’s part of the Buddha mafia.
Yes we are conspiring to overthrow the United States
that’s why we’re all engineers and doctors
or running donut stores
except for me, I teach music and write poems
I think it makes me dangerous.
My father thinks it makes me a disgrace
to the Asian community
he doesn’t show up at my performances
and still shows off all my high school math and physics
trophies in the basement to all his friends,
tells them I got into Harvard Engineering
He says I could have been brilliant.
He says I could have been brilliant?
My mother keeps fruit trees in the garden,
two Asian pear trees
that don’t transplant well in the soil.
It’s not like Shanghai
where her family had an orchard
She still remembers.
She still remembers
1948 was when she couldn’t bring the fruit overseas
or her uncle, who was shot
when they came for the land
and left the blossoms crimson.
Now they’re building a highway behind her backyard
that isn’t big enough for my mother’s garden
and I wonder how bitter the soil is
now that every morning my mother wakes up to
the uprooting of the ground.
This is the closest I will come to know to her China,
the sense of shaking, sudden starts in the night
a jackhammer or sickle I don’t know what it is she dreams.
She plants trees against the highway
I write my congressmen.
My congressman writes back:
“Thanks for your concern.
It’s people like you that make our country run.”
. . .
I want to buy my mother a new house—
one with cherry trees in the back,
only I am no millionaire
or engineer
but a musician
that’s sorry I couldn’t do more
or be more for my family
that fled from home for me
only so that I might flee home here.
But I’ll come back and visit
and so will my friends,
and god I hope they tell me the house smells like rice
and god I hope it does smell like rice
and god I hope it will never smell like rice to me
because it’s still my home
and because sometimes I think,
slanty eyes aside,
it’s what I’ve left.
it’s what I’ve left.
Eric Shieh
March, 2001
没有评论:
发表评论