美国国家公共电台 NPR What's Life Like For Immigrant Kids? 2 Teen Novels Paint A Sober Picture

 

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: 

We've heard a lot lately about the challenges immigrants face when they come into this country and how once they're here, children and teenagers can find themselves in circumstances beyond their control. Two new young adult novels focus on these challenges. NPR's Lynn Neary has more.

LYNN NEARY, BYLINE¹: Melissa de la Cruz moved to this country from the Philippines when she was a freshman² in high school. It was hard at first to adjust to a new culture, but it didn't take long to feel at home.

MELISSA DE LA CRUZ: And I remember feeling like after being here for about two years that I was an American. Like, I really felt like I was part of it.

NEARY: Her family came to the U.S. on her father's business visa fully³ expecting they would all get green cards. Things did not go as planned, and it would be many years before de la Cruz got her American citizenship⁴. So when her publisher asked if she wanted to write a young adult novel about immigration, she hesitated.

DE LA CRUZ: I knew it'd hard. And I didn't know if I really wanted to go there and feel those feelings again, feeling like I didn't belong and feeling so confused.

NEARY: Jasmine, the young girl at the center of de la Cruz's novel, "Something In Between," is also from the Philippines. She has no idea that her parents are in the United States illegally. When she finds out, she's devastated⁵.

(SOUNDBITE OF AUDIOBOOK, "SOMETHING IN BETWEEN")

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (Reading) I'm breaking apart, shattering. Who am I? Where do I belong? I'm not American. I'm not a legal resident. I don't even have a green card. I'm nothing. Nobody. Illegal.

NEARY: Jasmine learns of her status after she wins a prestigious⁶ scholarship. A classic overachiever, Jasmine is like a lot of kids who are immigrants, says de la Cruz. They work hard to prove they can succeed in this country.

DE LA CRUZ: So I wanted to, you know, put this all-American girl who happened to be Filipino and, you know, kind of put her through the wringer. Like, what if you're head cheerleader, class president, valedictorian, but then all of a sudden, you know, you're not that special anymore because of how you came to this country?

NEARY: De la Cruz loves writing love stories and her fans love to read them, so she thickens her plot with a star-crossed romance.

DE LA CRUZ: I love first romances. When everything is the first time, it's just so memorable⁷. It's so exciting. You know, I just love the optimism and the idealism of kids that age.

MARIE MARQUARDT: I firmly believe that when we enter into seeing complicated issues through the eyes of love, it changes everything.

NEARY: A love story is also at the center of Marie Marquardt's YA novel, "The Radius⁸ Of Us." Marquardt is an academic who has worked with immigrants for two decades. Over the years, she's written essays and articles about immigration issues. But more recently, she's turned to fiction.

MARQUARDT: It helps to bring out how deeply interconnected we are. And I love writing fiction, I love writing love stories because I want to delve⁹ into those connections and help us all to have the opportunity to dwell for a while in the experience of another person.

NEARY: "The Radius Of Us" is the story of two teenagers. Gretchen has led a comfortable life in suburban¹⁰ Atlanta. Phoenix¹¹ is an asylum¹² seeker who has been taken in by her neighbors. He and his younger brother fled El Salvador because a gang threatened to kill them.

(SOUNDBITE OF AUDIOBOOK, "THE RADIUS OF US")

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Reading) He had ordered us dead, and soon everyone who had ever pledged loyalty¹³ to that gang would know. And they would follow Delgado's orders because Mara siempre. The gang is forever. When Ari and I rounded the corner, I threw the gun into the lake and we ran all the way to the Guatemalan border.

NEARY: When they finally got to the U.S. Phoenix was sent to a detention¹⁴ center. He was separated from his younger brother, who is so traumatized that he stops talking and communicates only through drawings.

CARLOS MORATAYA: I just have to put myself on his shoes and see it from his perspective.

NEARY: Carlos Morataya, young Guatemalan immigrant, did the drawings for the book. An orphan¹⁵, Morataya says he also remembers being threatened by gangs.

MORATAYA: Before I moved to the orphanage¹⁶, I was pretty much in the street. And that's lot of the last resource of the kids. You know, they - that's their last option to go find someone that will protect them, which in this case are, like, the gangs.

NEARY: Morataya was in a Christian¹⁷ orphanage, which helped him move to the States as a student. He expects to get a green card and believes his story will end happily, as do the stories in both these books. But Marquardt says that's not the way most of these stories end.

MARQUARDT: I think that would be an understatement. They rarely ever end in the way that my story ends. So what I tried to do in this story is to give a happy ending, but to also ensure that my readers knew that this was a very, very unusual - a possible, but certainly not probable outcome.

NEARY: Both Marquardt and de la Cruz say their books are meant for everybody, especially those who may not know what life is like for an immigrant. Lynn Neary, NPR News, Washington.

1 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

2 freshman   

n.大学一年级学生(可兼指男女)

参考例句：

• Jack decided to live in during his freshman year at college.杰克决定大一时住校。
• He is a freshman in the show business.他在演艺界是一名新手。

3 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

4 citizenship   

n.市民权，公民权，国民的义务(身份)

参考例句：

• He was born in Sweden,but he doesn't have Swedish citizenship.他在瑞典出生，但没有瑞典公民身分。
• Ten years later,she chose to take Australian citizenship.十年后，她选择了澳大利亚国籍。

5 devastated   

v.彻底破坏( devastate的过去式和过去分词)；摧毁；毁灭；在感情上（精神上、财务上等）压垮adj.毁坏的；极为震惊的

参考例句：

• The bomb devastated much of the old part of the city. 这颗炸弹炸毁了旧城的一大片地方。
• His family is absolutely devastated. 他的一家感到极为震惊。

6 prestigious   

adj.有威望的，有声望的，受尊敬的

参考例句：

• The young man graduated from a prestigious university.这个年轻人毕业于一所名牌大学。
• You may even join a prestigious magazine as a contributing editor.甚至可能会加入一个知名杂志做编辑。

7 memorable   

adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的

参考例句：

• This was indeed the most memorable day of my life.这的确是我一生中最值得怀念的日子。
• The veteran soldier has fought many memorable battles.这个老兵参加过许多难忘的战斗。

8 radius   

n.半径，半径范围；有效航程，范围，界限

参考例句：

• He has visited every shop within a radius of two miles.周围两英里以内的店铺他都去过。
• We are measuring the radius of the circle.我们正在测量圆的半径。

9 delve   

v.深入探究，钻研

参考例句：

• We should not delve too deeply into this painful matter.我们不应该过分深究这件痛苦的事。
• We need to delve more deeply into these questions.这些是我们想进一步了解的。

10 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。

11 phoenix   

n.凤凰，长生(不死)鸟；引申为重生

参考例句：

• The airline rose like a phoenix from the ashes.这家航空公司又起死回生了。
• The phoenix worship of China is fetish worship not totem adoration.中国凤崇拜是灵物崇拜而非图腾崇拜。

12 asylum   

n.避难所，庇护所，避难

参考例句：

• The people ask for political asylum.人们请求政治避难。
• Having sought asylum in the West for many years,they were eventually granted it.他们最终获得了在西方寻求多年的避难权。

13 loyalty   

n.忠诚，忠心

参考例句：

• She told him the truth from a sense of loyalty.她告诉他真相是出于忠诚。
• His loyalty to his friends was never in doubt.他对朋友的一片忠心从来没受到怀疑。

14 detention   

n.滞留，停留；拘留，扣留；(教育)留下

参考例句：

• He was kept in detention by the police.他被警察扣留了。
• He was in detention in connection with the bribery affair.他因与贿赂事件有牵连而被拘留了。

15 orphan   

n.孤儿；adj.无父母的

参考例句：

• He brought up the orphan and passed onto him his knowledge of medicine.他把一个孤儿养大，并且把自己的医术传给了他。
• The orphan had been reared in a convent by some good sisters.这个孤儿在一所修道院里被几个好心的修女带大。

16 orphanage   

n.孤儿院

参考例句：

• They dispensed new clothes to the children in the orphanage.他们把新衣服发给孤儿院的小孩们。
• They gave the proceeds of the sale to the orphanage.他们把销售的收入给了这家孤儿院。

17 Christian   

adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒

参考例句：

• They always addressed each other by their Christian name.他们总是以教名互相称呼。
• His mother is a sincere Christian.他母亲是个虔诚的基督教徒。