Then a friend of a friend of mine had a daughter who was a dwarf. 我朋友的朋友有个女儿，是个小矮人。

And when her daughter was born, 当她女儿出生的时候，

she suddenly found herself confronting questions that now began to seem quite resonant to me. 她突然发现她要面对很多问题，这些问题使我产生共鸣。

She was facing the question of what to do with this child. 她当时面临的问题是--该如何对待这个孩子？

Should she say, You're just like everyone else but a little bit shorter? 她应该说你和其他人一样，只是矮了点儿？

Or should she try to construct some kind of dwarf identity, 还是去试图建立某种小矮人身份认同，

get involved in the Little People of America, 加入美国小个子联盟，

become aware of what was happening for dwarfs? 开始了解矮人生活圈的那些事？

And I suddenly thought, 然后我突然想到，

most deaf children are born to hearing parents. 大多数耳聋孩子的父母都是听力健全的。

Those hearing parents tend to try to cure them. 那些听力健全的父母总是试图去治愈他们的孩子。

Those deaf people discover community somehow in adolescence. 那些聋人要差不多到青春期的时候才开始接触聋人群体。

Most gay people are born to straight parents.Those straight parents often want them to function in what they think of as the mainstream world, 大多数同性恋者的父母是异性恋。那些异性恋父母常常希望他们的孩子表现得，如他们认为的主流世界所期望的那样，

and those gay people have to discover identity later on. 那些同性恋者不得不长大后才寻找身份认同。

And here was this friend of mine looking at these questions of identity with her dwarf daughter. 再说说我的这个朋友面对这些关于她小矮人女儿身份认同的问题。

And I thought, there it is again: 然后我想，又是这样。

A family that perceives itself to be normal with a child who seems to be extraordinary. 一个认为自己正常的家庭有着一个特殊的孩子。

And I hatched the idea that there are really two kinds of identity. 我想，事实上身份认同分为两种类型。

There are vertical identities,which are passed down generationally from parent to child. 有垂直身份认同，从父母到孩子，代代相传。

Those are things like ethnicity, frequently nationality, language, often religion. 也有像是种族，国际，语言，宗教。

Those are things you have in common with your parents and with your children. 你和你的父母,孩子拥有共同点,

And while some of them can be difficult, 而有些身份较难识别,

there's no attempt to cure them. 但并不需要尝试去改变。

You can argue that it's harder in the United States our current presidency notwithstanding to be a person of color. 你可以争辩说，在美国，作为有色人种生存艰难，尽管我们现任的总统是有色人种。

And yet, we have nobody who is trying to ensure that the next generation of children born to African-Americans and Asians come out with creamy skin and yellow hair. 确实，没人试图去保证非洲裔美国人，亚洲裔的孩子们生来就有着奶油色的皮肤和金黄的头发。