A Year in Reading: The Wounds That Bind
I’ve had a lot of big feelings this year.
今年我有很多感触。
This is due in part to the hormonal tides of pregnancy—as I write this, I’m three weeks shy of my due date.
这在一定程度上是由于怀孕期间的荷尔蒙波动所致——当我写这篇文章时，我距离预产期还有三周。
But as my beloved, ever-patient Longreads colleagues know, I’m predisposed to big feelings whether I’m growing a tiny human or not.
但正如我亲爱的、永远耐心的 Longreads 同事们知道的那样，无论我是否成长为一个小人，我都容易产生强烈的感情。
Hence my tendency to pick stories that hit a nerve: ones that make me angry, ones that make me cry, ones that lodge themselves in my brain and refuse to let me be.
因此，我倾向于选择那些触动我神经的故事：那些让我生气的故事，那些让我哭泣的故事，那些扎根在我的大脑里不让我听的故事。
This should all be the topic of a therapy session, or five.
这应该是一次或五次治疗的主题。
However, I also look to great writing to help me understand myself.
然而，我也寻求优秀的写作来帮助我了解自己。
To that end, I found something of a Rosetta stone for my approach to Longreads curation in one of the first pieces I picked in 2024.
为此，我在 2024 年挑选的第一批作品之一中为我的 Longreads 策展方法找到了一些罗塞塔石碑。
Published in Jewish Currents in January, Sarah Aziza’s essay “The Work of the Witness” is about the “livestreamed genocide” in Gaza.
莎拉·阿齐扎 (Sarah Aziza) 一月份发表在《犹太潮流》(Jewish Currents) 上的文章《见证者的工作》(The Work of the Witness) 是关于加沙“直播种族灭绝”的。
Aziza is interested in finding meaning and even purpose in the act of witnessing horror.
阿齐扎有兴趣在目睹恐怖的行为中寻找意义甚至目的。
In Arabic, she explains, “the verb to witness comes from the root شهد .
她解释说，在阿拉伯语中，“见证的动词来自词根 ôهð 。
This is also the source of the much-maligned word شهيد, shaheed, which means, literally, witnesser, but is often translated as martyr.
这也是备受诟病的“Shaheed”一词的来源，字面意思是“见证者”，但通常被翻译为“烈士”。
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To be a witness is to make contact, to be touched, and to bear the marks of this touch.” She continues: “We must make an effort to stay with what we see, allowing ourselves to be cut.
成为见证者就是去接触、被触摸，并带有这种触摸的痕迹。”她继续说道：“我们必须努力坚持我们所看到的，允许自己被削减。
This wound is essential.
这个伤口是必不可少的。
Into this wound, imagination may pour—not to invade the other’s subjectivity, but to awaken awe at the depth, privacy, and singularity of each life.
想象力可能会倾注到这个伤口中——不是为了侵犯他人的主观性，而是为了唤醒对每个生命的深度、隐私和独特性的敬畏。
There, we might glimpse, if sidelong, how much of Gaza’s suffering we will never know.
在那里，我们可能会瞥见加沙有多少我们永远不会知道的苦难。
This is where real witness must begin: in mystery.”
这就是真正的见证必须开始的地方：在神秘中。”
So I allow myself to be cut.
所以我允许自己被切割。
I even seek out the experience.
我什至寻求经验。
I’ve found it this year in other stories about the war in Gaza: “The Road to 1948,” a wide-reaching historical discussion about the years preceding the Nakba; Yuval Abraham’s jaw-dropping investigation of Lavender, the AI system that Israel uses to select bombing targets; and Jenny Kleeman’s feature about post-mortem sperm retrieval from the bodies of Israeli soldiers, an unforgettable story that forces readers to consider what the dead ever owe the living.
今年我在其他有关加沙战争的故事中发现了这一点：《通向 1948 年之路》，这是一部关于大灾难之前几年的广泛历史讨论；尤瓦尔·亚伯拉罕 (Yuval Abraham) 对以色列用来选择轰炸目标的人工智能系统 Lavender 进行了令人瞠目结舌的调查；珍妮·克莱曼（Jenny Kleeman）关于从以色列士兵尸体中提取死后精子的专题报道，这是一个令人难忘的故事，迫使读者思考死者欠生者什么。
I’ve been cut, too, by the fact that John Woodrow Cox’s intimate reporting on the groundbreaking prosecution of a school shooter’s parents is necessary work, thanks to America’s toxic gun culture; by Sharon Lerner’s profile of a scientist who readily admitted that she didn’t want to believe the company she worked for was “poisoning the public” with forever chemicals; and by Mark Warren’s devastating story about an Alabama pastor whose life was destroyed by the ballooning scourge of right-wing media.
我也很伤心，因为约翰·伍德罗·考克斯（John Woodrow Cox）对学校枪击案凶手父母的开创性起诉的亲密报道是必要的工作，这要归功于美国的有毒枪支文化；莎朗·勒纳（Sharon Lerner）对一位科学家的描述，她欣然承认，她不想相信她所工作的公司正在用永远的化学物质“毒害公众”；马克·沃伦（Mark Warren）讲述了一位阿拉巴马州牧师的毁灭性故事，他的生活被右翼媒体不断膨胀的祸害摧毁了。
Reading these stories was never about inviting pain, frustration, or dismay for the sake of it.
阅读这些故事从来不是为了带来痛苦、沮丧或沮丧。
Nor, I suspect, was that the case for the writers who crafted them.
我怀疑创作它们的作家也不是这样的。
As Aziza suggests, witnessing is about opening ourselves up to possibility.
正如阿齐扎所说，见证就是向可能性敞开心扉。
As readers, as writers, as people, witnessing means nurturing our sense of curiosity, wonder, and justice—the essential tools for correcting the world we’ve been saddled with.
作为读者、作家、人，见证意味着培养我们的好奇心、惊奇感和正义感——这是纠正我们所面临的世界的基本工具。
Perhaps that’s the wrong way to think about the world, though, as a burden to bear.
然而，也许将世界视为一种负担的想法是错误的。
Instead, we can channel Aziza.
相反，我们可以引导阿齐扎。
What a privilege it is to be in the world, to spend a lifetime with its mysteries, and to have the capacity to leave it with marks of our own.
能够生活在这个世界上，与它的奥秘共度一生，并有能力在这个世界上留下我们自己的印记，是多么荣幸啊。
If I sound like a bleeding heart, so be it.
如果我听起来像一颗流血的心，那就这样吧。
I’ll keep letting the stories I share dig their edges into me.
我会继续让我分享的故事挖掘我的优势。
Maybe, in reading them, you’ll do the same.
也许，在阅读它们的过程中，你也会做同样的事情。
In between I’ll find pieces that make me laugh until my overgrown belly hurts—Julian Lucas’s profile of the inimitable Cole Escola comes to mind—and others that offer a sense of purest hope about the human condition.
在这之间，我会找到一些让我笑得肚子疼的作品——朱利安·卢卡斯(Julian Lucas)对无与伦比的科尔·埃斯科拉(Cole Escola)的描述浮现在脑海中——以及其他一些对人类状况带来最纯粹希望的作品。
I’ll leave you with a quote from another favorite read this year.
我将引用今年另一本最喜欢的读物中的一句话。
“When you know someone else intimately, it is as close as you can come to living more than one life,” Sierra Bellows writes in an essay for The American Scholar about the experience of trying to understand the existence of others.
“当你亲密地了解另一个人时，你就几乎可以过上不止一种生活，”塞拉·贝洛斯在《美国学者》的一篇文章中写道，讲述了试图理解他人存在的经历。
“It seems to me that we need that consolation many times over, in many forms.” —SD
“在我看来，我们多次需要以多种形式得到这种安慰。” —SD
Browse all of our year-end collections since 2011.
浏览我们自 2011 年以来的所有年终系列。