2021年经济学人 西西莉·泰森-佳人绝世而独立(3)（在线收听）

Those included all the parts, and they were few enough, customarily assigned to black actors. While the men were con-men, hustlers or drug addicts, the women were plump maids or prostitutes, Jezebels or Aunt Jemimas.

这些角色包括所有的角色，而且数量很少，通常都是由黑人演员扮演的。男性角色通常是些骗子、皮条客或瘾君子，而女人则是臃肿的女佣或失足女、毒妇或Aunt Jemimas这样的类型。

Characters like these had no dimension, no complexities or professions or family life, as white characters did.

像这样的角色毫无内涵，枯燥乏味，也没有职业或家庭生活，与那些白人角色不同。

They were cartoons, the insulting half-wit faces on tins of chewing tobacco or laundry bleach, when they should have been teachers and lawyers, doctors and politicians, mothers and fathers. They were never given their full, true humanity.

他们只是卡通形象，以极具侮辱意味的傻子形象出现在咀嚼烟草或洗衣漂白剂包装上，而他们本应该是教师、律师、医生、政客、母亲和父亲。可他们从未被赋予完整的、真实的人性。

She especially longed to see black sisters portrayed as they really were: the strength of their race, the ones who held their families together when the men went off, for whatever reason. (She knew all about that, saving Miles Davis time after time when the jazzman broke up their relationship with the stench of his philandering and the horrors of his cocaine.)

她十分渴望看到关于黑人姐妹真实境况的描述，关于黑人种族力量的介绍，关于黑人男子因各种原因离家后，将整个家庭凝聚在一起的黑人女性的写照。（她对此感触颇深：迈尔斯·戴维斯（Miles Davis）是一位爵士乐手，他拈花惹草、吸食可卡因，令二人的关系破裂，而她却不计前嫌，屡次对他施以援手。）

The role she treasured most came in “Sounder” in 1972, where she played the wife of a Louisianan sharecropper who, when her husband was imprisoned for stealing food, had to run the farm and raise the children alone. It won her a best-actress Oscar nomination. As Rebecca, wearing cornrows as she hoed the dry soil and pinned up washing, she thought of her own mother, her fierce mentor, who had also brought up her children largely single-handed.

她最珍视的角色是1972年在《儿子离家时》(Sounder)饰演一位路易斯安那佃农的妻子。她的丈夫因偷盗粮食入狱，她不得不独自经营农场，抚养孩子。她凭借这部电影获得了奥斯卡最佳女主角提名。她饰演的丽贝卡梳着玉米辫，辛勤地耕种干涸的土地、晾晒洗好的衣物，她想起了自己的母亲，母亲是她严厉的导师，同时也是一位将孩子独自拉扯大的女性。

They were poor, moving from tenement to tenement in Harlem, but her mother always managed to whip up potatoes and salt pork for their meals, and to sew the wonderful organza dresses her daughters wore in church. From her she had inherited, as well as her “blessed assurance” of God’s guidance, her stiff, straight back.

他们的日子很拮据，在哈莱姆区的廉价公寓里搬来搬去，但她的母亲总能设法煮土豆和腌猪肉给孩子们吃，还能缝制女儿们在教堂里穿的漂亮的欧根纱连衣裙。她从母亲那里继承了那不屈、挺直的脊背，也继承了上帝指引她的“祝福的保证”。