精美英文欣赏:愤怒的力量可以让你走的更远

I believe that a little outrage¹ can take you a long way.

I remember the exact moment when I discovered outrage as a kind of fuel. It was about 1980. I was 17, the daughter of Bolivian immigrants growing up in suburban² Detroit. After a dinner table conversation with my family about the wars going on in Central America and the involvement of the United States (my country by birth and my parents’ country by choice), a good friend said the thing that set me off. He told me that he thought the U.S. might someday go to war somewhere in Latin America. He looked me in the eye and told me that if it happens, he believes my parents belong in an internment³ camp just like the Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Now this was someone who knew us, who had sat at our table and knew how American we are. We are a little exotic maybe, but it never occurred to me that we were anything but an American family. For my friend, as for many others, there will always be doubt as to whether we really belong in this country, which is our home, enough doubt to justify⁴ taking away our freedom. My outrage that day became the propellant of my life, driving me straight to the civil rights movement, where I’ve worked ever since.

I guess outrage got me pretty far. I found jobs in the immigrant rights movement. I moved to Washington to work as an advocate. I found plenty more to be angry about along the way and built something of a reputation for being strident. Someone once sent my mom an article about my work. She was proud and everything but wanted to know why her baby was described as “ferocious.”

Anger has a way, though, of hollowing out your insides. In my first job, if we helped 50 immigrant families in a day, the faces of the five who didn’t qualify haunted my dreams at night. When I helped pass a bill in Congress to help Americans reunite with their immigrant families, I could only think of my cousin who didn’t qualify and who had to wait another decade to get her immigration papers.

It’s like that every day. You have victories but your defeats outnumber them by far, and you remember the names and faces of those who lost. I still have the article about the farm worker who took his life after we lost a political fight. I have not forgotten his name — and not just because his last name was the same as mine. His story reminds me of why I do this work and how little I can really do.

I am deeply familiar with that hollow place that outrage carves in your soul. I’ve fed off of it to sustain my work for many years. But it hasn’t eaten me away completely, maybe because the hollow place gets filled with other, more powerful things like compassion⁵, faith, family, music, the goodness of people around me. These things fill me up and temper my outrage with a deep sense of gratitude⁶ that I have the privilege of doing my small part to make things better.

我相信愤怒一点，可以让你走的更远。

我清晰地记得自己是如何感受到愤怒是一种不可或缺的能量的。大约在1980年，那时，我刚好17岁，生活在底特律郊区的玻利维亚移民的女儿。那天的晚餐上，家人讨论了正在中美爆发的战争和美国的战争情况（我出生的国家，我父母选择的城市），一个好朋友说了一句让我印象深刻的话，他说美国总有一天会掀起拉丁美洲的战争，他盯着我，并对我说，如果真是那样，他确信我的父母会像二战当中的日籍美国人那样作为战俘被抓起来。

这个和我们说这句话的人，是一个正坐在我家饭桌边的人，一个知道我们是移民的人。或许我们有一点异族的血统，但是我从来没有想过我们并不是一个真正地道的美国家庭。但是，对我的这个朋友，还有其他的朋友而言，他们心里总是疑问，对我们是否可以真正融入这个所谓的家庭，我们的自由会不会这个家剥走。那天的愤怒是我整个人生的推动力，直接将我推向了公民权利运动。

我想，愤怒让我走了很远。我参加了移民权利运动，我搬到了华盛顿，拥护这个运动。我找到了更多让自己愤怒的理由，我也因为自己的刺耳的声音树立了自己的声誉。有人一度写信给我的母亲，告诉她我的工作，她很骄傲，但是不清楚为何我会被称之为“残忍的人”。

愤怒是一种掏空你所有心思的力量。我才参加工作的时候，如果我们每天帮助50户移民家庭，5个没有资格的家庭就会像噩梦一样缠绕着我。当我成功推出一向议案，移民者可以和美国本地人成为一家人的时候，我想到的只是我那个没有资格的表妹，她需要再等上10年。

每一天都是这样。你会有所收获，但是你的失败更多，而你记住的往往是那些让你失望的。我曾经写过一篇文章，是关于一个农民的，在我们一次议案失败之后，他结束了自己的生命。我没有忘记他的名字——不仅仅是因为他和我姓一样，而是他的故事每时每刻都在提醒我，我为什么要这样做，我能做的事情又是多么的少。

我很清楚愤怒能够在人的心灵中燃烧出多大的漏洞，我的工作已经做了很多年了，我已经有些厌倦了，但是我没有彻底地放弃，或许我的心灵正被一些其他的，更有力量的，像激情，信仰，家庭，音乐和人们的善意填充着。所以这些都在帮助我，将我的愤怒转化成五金的感激，让我深深地知道自己所做的这些是多么的微小。

1 outrage   

n.暴行，侮辱，愤怒；vt.凌辱，激怒

参考例句：

• When he heard the news he reacted with a sense of outrage.他得悉此事时义愤填膺。
• We should never forget the outrage committed by the Japanese invaders.我们永远都不应该忘记日本侵略者犯下的暴行。

2 suburban   

adj.城郊的，在郊区的

参考例句：

• Suburban shopping centers were springing up all over America. 效区的商业中心在美国如雨后春笋般地兴起。
• There's a lot of good things about suburban living.郊区生活是有许多优点。

3 internment   

n.拘留

参考例句：

• Certainly the recent attacks against the internment camps are evidence enough. 很明显，最近营地遭受到的攻击就是一个足好的证明。 来自互联网
• The chapters on the internment are Both readaBle and well researched. 这些关于拘留的章节不仅具可读性而且研究得很透彻。 来自互联网

4 justify   

vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护

参考例句：

• He tried to justify his absence with lame excuses.他想用站不住脚的借口为自己的缺席辩解。
• Can you justify your rude behavior to me?你能向我证明你的粗野行为是有道理的吗？

5 compassion   

n.同情，怜悯

参考例句：

• He could not help having compassion for the poor creature.他情不自禁地怜悯起那个可怜的人来。
• Her heart was filled with compassion for the motherless children.她对于没有母亲的孩子们充满了怜悯心。

6 gratitude   

adj.感激，感谢

参考例句：

• I have expressed the depth of my gratitude to him.我向他表示了深切的谢意。
• She could not help her tears of gratitude rolling down her face.她感激的泪珠禁不住沿着面颊流了下来。