Best of 2021: Profiles

Since we started the #longreads hashtag in 2009 to share great reads on Twitter, curation has been the beating heart of Longreads.

自从我们于 2009 年开始使用 #longreads 标签在 Twitter 上分享精彩读物以来，策展一直是 Longreads 的核心。

All year long, we highlight our favorite stories in the weekly Longreads Top 5.

一整年，我们都会在每周的长读小说前 5 名中突出显示我们最喜欢的故事。

At the end of the year, we love to reflect on and share the pieces that stayed with us, a tradition we’ve kept for 10 years!

到了年底，我们喜欢反思并分享那些留在我们身边的作品，这是我们保持了 10 年的传统！

Now it is the turn of the profile — as we highlight the craft of writing about someone else.

现在轮到个人简介了——我们要重点强调写别人的技巧。

These five writers are masterful at providing insights into another’s world.

这五位作家擅长提供对他人世界的见解。

## The Girl in the Kent State Photo, Patricia McCormick, The Washington Post Magazine, April 19, 2021

## 《肯特州的女孩》照片，Patricia McCormick，《华盛顿邮报》杂志，2021 年 4 月 19 日

On May 4, 1970, Kent State University students gathered on campus to peacefully rally against President Richard Nixon’s decision to invade Cambodia, which would expand U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

1970 年 5 月 4 日，肯特州立大学的学生聚集在校园和平集会，反对理查德·尼克松总统入侵柬埔寨的决定，该决定将扩大美国对越南战争的介入。

Fourteen-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio, a free-spirited teen who hitchhiked around the country to escape a volatile family life in Florida, found herself on the school’s Ohio grounds, drawn to the protests.

十四岁的玛丽·安·维奇奥（Mary Ann Vecchio）是一位自由奔放的青少年，为了逃离佛罗里达州不稳定的家庭生活，她搭便车环游全国，却发现自己来到了学校位于俄亥俄州的校园，并被抗议活动所吸引。

National Guard troops shot four students dead that day, including a man, Jeffrey Miller, whom Vecchio had been talking to.

国民警卫队当天开枪打死了四名学生，其中包括维奇奥一直在与之交谈的一名男子杰弗里·米勒。

She dropped to the ground and knelt beside his body — her arms raised, her face full of anguish and horror.

她倒在地上，跪在他的尸体旁边，双臂举起，脸上充满痛苦和恐惧。

McCormick documents her pleas: “‘Doesn’t anyone see what just happened here?’ she remembers crying.

麦考密克记录了她的恳求：“‘没有人看到这里刚刚发生的事情吗？’她记得自己哭了。

‘Why is no one helping him?’”

“为什么没有人帮助他？”

Student photographer John Filo snapped a picture of her at that very moment, capturing what would become an iconic image, one that “fundamentally changed the way we see ourselves and the world around us,” writes Patricia McCormick.

学生摄影师约翰·费洛在那一刻给她拍了一张照片，这张照片后来成为了一张标志性的照片，这张照片“从根本上改变了我们看待自己和周围世界的方式”，帕特里夏·麦考密克写道。

Through a dozen phone interviews with Vecchio, who is now 65 and living a quiet retired life, McCormick recounts that fateful day and how the image “hijacked” Vecchio’s life, haunting her even 50 years on.

麦考密克现年 65 岁，过着平静的退休生活，通过对韦奇奥的十几次电话采访，麦考密克讲述了那决定命运的一天，以及这张照片如何“劫持”了韦奇奥的生活，甚至在 50 年后仍困扰着她。

(Her reaction to the video of George Floyd’s last moments shook her to her core.) Affected from “opposite ends of the lens,” Vecchio and Filo are intimately connected to one another through the photo — Vecchio a “human flashpoint” and a symbol of the national conscience, and Filo full of grief and guilt over what the image did to her, despite his winning a Pulitzer for his work.

（她对乔治·弗洛伊德最后时刻的视频的反应让她内心震撼不已。） 受“镜头两端”的影响，维奇奥和费洛通过这张照片紧密地联系在一起——维奇奥是“人类的爆发点”，是国家良心的象征，而费洛对这张照片对她造成的影响充满了悲伤和内疚，尽管他的作品赢得了普利策奖。

Compassionate and superbly reported, McCormick’s profile hits a nerve, and especially resonates in our time of virality and smartphone-recorded moments of injustice.

麦考密克的个人资料充满同情心，报道精彩，触动人心，尤其在我们这个病毒式传播和智能手机记录不公正时刻的时代引起共鸣。

—Cheri Lucas Rowlands

——切里·卢卡斯·罗兰兹

## La Cancion de la Nena, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, Oxford American, June 1, 2021

## La Cancion de la Nena，Vanessa Angélica Villarreal，牛津美国大学，2021 年 6 月 1 日

In this beautiful piece, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal offers a haunting portrait of her father, Gilberto Villarreal, a virtuoso guitarist and musician, a man who was a “prodigy at the foot of this country, in a place no one ever expects to find someone extraordinary.“ Villarreal recalls the struggles her father endured as a Mexican immigrant trying to be discovered in a music business dominated by white interests and pernicious racism: “What I experienced as poetry came first through the song my father wrote for me when I was two years old, a song whose melody is a turning helix in my blood, another way of speaking my name.

在这首美丽的作品中，凡妮莎·安吉利卡·比利亚雷亚尔 (Vanessa Angélica Villarreal) 为她的父亲吉尔伯托·比利亚雷亚尔 (Gilberto Villarreal) 描绘了一幅令人难忘的肖像。比利亚雷亚尔回忆起她父亲作为墨西哥移民所经历的挣扎，试图在白人利益和有害种族主义主导的音乐行业中脱颖而出：“我对诗歌的体验首先来自于我两岁时父亲为我写的歌曲，这首歌的旋律是我血液中的旋转螺旋，是表达我名字的另一种方式。

It is the rarest gift I have ever received.“ This is a piece steeped in love and admiration for a man and an artist who, despite his many musical skills and achievements, did not consider himself a success.

这是我收到过的最稀有的礼物。”这是一首充满对一个男人和一位艺术家的爱和钦佩的作品，尽管他拥有许多音乐技巧和成就，但他并不认为自己是成功的。

“You might think from my tone that this is a sad story,“ Villarreal writes.

“从我的语气中你可能会认为这是一个悲伤的故事，”比利亚雷亚尔写道。

“And maybe it is, but it is also a tribute to an unseen life, a long overdue recognition of ordinary genius worn down by circumstance.“ —Krista Stevens

“也许是这样，但这也是对看不见的生活的致敬，是对因环境而疲惫不堪的普通天才的迟来的认可。” —克里斯塔·史蒂文斯

Author Vanessa Angélica Villarreal on the story from 2021 that impacted her most:

作家 Vanessa Angélica Villarreal 讲述 2021 年对她影响最大的故事：

Carina del Valle Schorske’s “Dancing Through New York in a Summer of Joy and Grief“ in The New York Times Magazine was an incredibly rich, historical snapshot of embodiment, grief, vitality, and rebellion in the shared ritual of social dance, specific to Black, Latin, queer, and immigrant communities.

Carina del Valle Schorske 在《纽约时报》杂志上发表的《在充满欢乐和悲伤的夏天在纽约跳舞》是对黑人、拉丁人、酷儿和移民社区特有的社交舞蹈共同仪式中体现、悲伤、活力和叛逆的极其丰富的历史快照。

From Harlem to Brooklyn and everywhere in between, del Valle Schorske writes a history of social dance as a site of healing after mass tragedy that is part personal essay, part performance theory, part history lesson — an erotics of survival and joy at the end of the world.

从哈莱姆区到布鲁克林以及其间的任何地方，德尔·瓦勒·肖尔斯克（del Valle Schorske）书写了一部社交舞的历史，作为大规模悲剧后的治愈场所，这部分是个人文章，部分是表演理论，部分是历史课——一种关于世界末日生存和欢乐的情色。

## What Mike Fanone Can’t Forget, Molly Ball, Time, August 5, 2021

## Mike Fanone 无法忘记的事，Molly Ball，《时代》杂志，2021 年 8 月 5 日

Given the state of the celebrity-industrial complex, the vast majority of profiles you read in any given year are about people you already know.

考虑到名人产业综合体的状况，您在任何一年中阅读的绝大多数个人资料都是关于您已经认识的人的。

The truly special ones, though, tend to buck convention.

然而，真正特别的人往往会打破常规。

And that’s exactly the case with Molly Ball’s riveting portrait of Mike Fanone, the Washington D.C. narcotics officer who drove to the Capitol on January 6 to help defend it against insurrectionists.

莫莉·鲍尔（Molly Ball）为华盛顿特区缉毒官员迈克·法农（Mike Fanone）拍摄的引人入胜的肖像正是这种情况，他于 1 月 6 日驱车前往国会大厦，帮助保卫国会大厦免受叛乱分子的侵害。

Sure, you may have seen Fanone on cable news in the aftermath of the riots, may have thought he was a hero or a martyr or a turncoat or anything else — but you didn’t know what he’d gone through that day, let alone who he was.

当然，你可能在骚乱后的有线电视新闻中看到过法农，可能认为他是英雄、烈士、叛徒或其他什么——但你不知道他那天经历了什么，更不知道他是谁。

Ball’s scene work and deft reconstruction help bring together the splintered shards of a complicated, imperfect man, one who somehow both validates and punctures whatever assumptions you had.

鲍尔的场景工作和巧妙的重建有助于将一个复杂、不完美的人的碎片聚集在一起，他以某种方式既验证又刺破了你的任何假设。

“He’s not asking to be called a hero — he just wants us to remember what his sacrifice was for,” she writes.

“他并不是要求被称为英雄——他只是想让我们记住他的牺牲是为了什么，”她写道。

“Fanone believes we can’t keep trying to outrun this thing; we’ve got to turn around and face it, defeat it once and for all.

“法诺相信我们不能一直试图超越这个东西；我们必须转身面对它，一劳永逸地击败它。

That if all we do is turn away and hope it fades, it will just keep getting stronger until it comes back to kill us all.” Once upon a time, that may have sounded overwrought.

如果我们所做的只是转身离开并希望它消失，它只会变得越来越强大，直到它卷土重来杀死我们所有人。”曾几何时，这听起来可能有些过度紧张。

Today, it’s all too real.

今天，这一切都太真实了。

—Peter Rubin

——彼得·鲁宾

## Stop Hustling Black Death, Imani Perry, New York, May 24, 2021

## 停止喧嚣黑死病，Imani Perry，纽约，2021 年 5 月 24 日

What happens when the worst day of your life animates a social movement over which you have no control?

当你生命中最糟糕的一天引发一场你无法控制的社会运动时，会发生什么？

This question is the engine of Imani Perry’s profile of Samaria Rice, mother of Tamir Rice, killed by police in 2014.

这个问题是伊马尼·佩里 (Imani Perry) 对撒玛利亚·赖斯 (Samaria Rice) 的描述的引擎，她是塔米尔·赖斯 (Tamir Rice) 的母亲，于 2014 年被警察杀害。

Samaria was anguished, and she wanted justice.

撒玛利亚非常痛苦，她想要伸张正义。

But she didn’t want to be told how to act, or to see “leaders” she didn’t know speaking for her — much less making money off her son’s death.

但她不想被告知如何行动，也不想看到她不认识的“领导人”为她说话——更不用说从她儿子的死中赚钱了。

In Perry’s hands, Samaria’s story is a window into the growing pains of Black Lives Matter.

在佩里的手中，撒玛利亚的故事是了解“黑人生命也是命”成长痛苦的一扇窗户。

If readers are uncomfortable with what they see, that’s the point: We can’t look away from the truth, Perry says, just because it’s messy.

佩里说，如果读者对他们所看到的内容感到不舒服，那就是重点：我们不能因为真相混乱而忽视真相。

“We have lost a great deal of history by relying upon a neat consensus narrative,” she writes.

“由于依赖简洁的共识叙述，我们失去了大量历史，”她写道。

“If we’re not careful, we run the risk of letting that become the story of today as well.” —Seyward Darby

“如果我们不小心，我们就有可能让这件事成为今天的故事。” ——西沃德·达比

The opening lines of another profile by Imani Perry, which author Becca Andrews chose as her favorite lede of the year:

伊玛尼·佩里 (Imani Perry) 的另一篇简介的开场白，作者贝卡·安德鲁斯 (Becca Andrews) 将其选为她今年最喜欢的 LEDE：

“I knew from the beginning that I would not meet Gayl Jones.

“我从一开始就知道我不会见到盖尔·琼斯。

Or see a recent photograph of her.

或者看她最近的照片。

Or ask her any questions.

或者问她任何问题。

What does it feel like, 46 years after the first, to have a new novel coming out?

在第一部小说问世 46 年后，新小说问世是什么感觉？

Why did you step out of view?

为什么你走出了人们的视线？

Did it make you a more honest writer?

这是否让你成为一个更诚实的作家？

Did it serve your soul?

它为你的灵魂服务吗？

I would not get answers.

我不会得到答案。

I would not be able to charm her into laughter.

我无法让她笑起来。

I know she is brilliant, obscure, irascible.

我知道她才华横溢，默默无闻，脾气暴躁。

I imagine her smile is still wry.

我想象她的笑容仍然是苦涩的。

But does she still wear her head wrapped in 2021?

但2021年了，她还裹着头吗？

Is she still adept at putting a nosy questioner in her place?“

她还擅长让一个爱管闲事的提问者代替她吗？

—“She Changed Black Literature Forever.

——“她永远改变了黑人文学。

Then She Disappeared,“ The New York Times Magazine

然后她就消失了，”纽约时报杂志

## Benji Is One Down Dog, Madeleine Aggeler, Texas Monthly, June 2, 2021

## Benji Is One Down Dog，玛德琳·阿格勒，《德克萨斯月刊》，2021 年 6 月 2 日

This piece brought a smile to my face and delight to my heart.

这首曲子让我脸上洋溢着笑容，心里也充满了喜悦。

For even in the age of the Instagram-famous pet, it’s not often we get a proper pooch profile.

即使在 Instagram 上著名的宠物时代，我们也很少能获得正确的狗狗资料。

Benji the dog is a George Clooney lookalike who “prefers to greet the world au naturel whenever possible,” writes Madeleine Aggeler.

马德琳·阿格勒（Madeleine Aggeler）写道，这只狗本吉（Benji）长得很像乔治·克鲁尼（George Clooney），“只要有可能，它就更喜欢以自然的方式迎接世界”。

He is “confident that wherever he goes, everyone will be thrilled to meet him,” and he is right — they are: Benji is “one of the most famous dogs in America right now.” A worthy profile subject, indeed.

他“相信无论他走到哪里，每个人都会很高兴见到他”，他是对的——他们是：本吉是“目前美国最著名的狗之一”。确实是一个值得关注的主题。

His is an interesting story: His owner, the YouTube yoga instructor Adriene Mishler, was the champion of COVID lockdowns, with her online exercise classes becoming incredibly popular.

他的故事很有趣：他的主人、YouTube 瑜伽教练阿德里安·米什勒 (Adriene Mishler) 是新冠疫情封锁的拥护者，她的在线健身课程变得非常受欢迎。

Benji was a part of this, making cameos on camera that brought joy to Adriene’s viewers.

Benji 也是其中的一部分，他在镜头前客串，为 Adriene 的观众带来欢乐。

Written with great creativity and humor, Aggeler’s article shows us why Benji is such a scene-stealer.

阿格勒的文章充满创意和幽默，向我们展示了为什么本吉如此抢镜。

— Carolyn Wells

— 卡罗琳·威尔斯