Best of 2023: Personal Essays
Personal essays are as much about the readers as the writers.
个人论文与读者和作者一样重要。
While all the essays in this list demonstrate exceptional writing—each piece struck a distinct chord with the editor who chose it.
虽然此列表中的所有文章都表现出出色的写作能力，但每一篇文章都引起了选择它的编辑的独特共鸣。
For Seyward, it was an essay on grief.
对于西沃德来说，这是一篇关于悲伤的文章。
For Krista, a piece on community experience.
对于克里斯塔来说，这是一篇关于社区经验的文章。
Peter was drawn to video game writing (Red Dead Redemption 2!), Cheri to the immigrant experience and caring for loved ones, and Carolyn to the fear of missed opportunities as we age (and a vicious jungle tick).
彼得被电子游戏写作（《荒野大镖客：救赎 2》！）所吸引，谢里被移民经历和照顾亲人所吸引，卡罗琳则害怕随着年龄的增长而失去机会（以及恶性丛林蜱虫）。
We hope you find a piece to resonate with you as you read these beautiful personal stories.
我们希望您在阅读这些美丽的个人故事时找到能引起共鸣的作品。
## Ahead of Time
## 提前
Kamran Javadizadeh | The Yale Review | June 12, 2023 | 3,285 words
卡姆兰·贾瓦迪扎德 |耶鲁评论| 2023 年 6 月 12 日 | 3,285 字
Grief is unpredictable.
悲伤是无法预测的。
Sometimes it stabs you, sometimes it suffocates you; when it isn’t making you weep or scream, it’s leaving you numb.
有时它刺伤你，有时它让你窒息；当它不让你哭泣或尖叫时，它会让你麻木。
Grief is also unfathomable: we cannot see, much less reach, the edges of the permanent absence of someone we love.
悲伤也是深不可测的：我们看不到，更不用说触及我们所爱之人永久缺席的边缘。
“Grief may be the knowledge …
“悲伤可能是知识……
that the future won’t be like the past,” Kamran Javadizadeh writes in this exquisite essay about the death of his sister, Bita.
卡姆兰·贾瓦迪扎德 (Kamran Javadizadeh) 在这篇关于他妹妹比塔 (Bita) 去世的精美文章中写道：“未来不会像过去一样。”
“Like water to the page, it spreads in all directions, it thins the surface, it touches what you cannot touch.” Javadizadeh reflects on his grief through the lens of poetry he encountered during the experience of losing Bita: a volume of Langston Hughes he located in their shared childhood bedroom; a copy of The Dead and the Living by Sharon Olds, filled with Bita’s notes from college; a Hafez verse that Bita texted to him one day.
“就像页面上的水一样，它向各个方向扩散，它使表面变薄，它触及你无法触及的东西。”贾瓦迪扎德通过在失去比塔的经历中遇到的诗歌镜头来反思他的悲伤：他在他们童年共用的卧室里找到了一本兰斯顿·休斯的书；莎朗·奥尔兹 (Sharon Olds) 所著的《死者与生者》，里面有比塔的大学笔记；有一天，比塔给他发了一首哈菲兹的诗。
The best poetry is not unlike grief: it is vast, complex, elusive.
最好的诗歌与悲伤没有什么不同：它是广阔的、复杂的、难以捉摸的。
And in reading verse, Javadizadeh shows, we can find lessons for mourning.
贾瓦迪扎德表示，通过阅读诗歌，我们可以找到哀悼的教训。
I’ve thought about this essay countless times since I read it last summer, and I suspect I will reread it many times in the years to come.
自从去年夏天读到这篇文章以来，我已经无数次地思考过它，并且我怀疑在未来的几年里我还会多次重读它。
—SD
—SD
## The Butchering
## 屠宰
Jake Skeets | Emergence Magazine | June 22, 2023 | 3,901 words
杰克斯基茨 |新兴杂志| 2023 年 6 月 22 日 | 3,901 字
Consider what it means to truly feel full—with a full stomach and a full heart—when your physical and spiritual hungers are satiated for a time.
想想当你身体和精神上的饥饿暂时得到满足时，真正感到饱意味着什么——胃饱了，心也饱了。
Diné poet Jake Skeets mulls these layers of resonance in his beautiful essay “The Butchering,” in which he prepares to kill a sheep for “the Kinaałda.
迪内诗人杰克·斯基茨（Jake Skeets）在他优美的文章《屠宰》（The Butchering）中仔细考虑了这些层次的共鸣，在文中他准备为“基纳乌达”（Kinaałda）宰杀一只羊。
.
。
.
。
.loosely translated as the Diné puberty ceremony.” For Skeets and members of his Indigenous community, story is wonderfully entangled with preparing the food that will nourish his family both physically and spiritually.
.大致翻译为迪内青春期仪式。”对于斯基茨和他的原住民社区的成员来说，故事与准备滋养家人身心的食物紧密相连。
Community members teach and learn interchangeably, switching roles naturally in a space of safety, free from shame.
社区成员可以互换教学和学习，在安全、无羞耻的空间中自然地转换角色。
Skeets meditates on the open mindset needed to fully participate; sometimes he is a child, earning knowledge passed on from family and sometimes he is an uncle, offering an example for others.
Skeets 思考充分参与所需的开放心态；有时他是一个孩子，从家庭中获得知识，有时他是一个叔叔，为他人树立榜样。
There’s a slowness to savor in Skeets’ writing, a gentle quickening you observe in the essay as he educates you on what it takes to sustain his community and their Indigenous way of life.
斯基茨的写作有一种缓慢的味道，但当他教育你如何维持他的社区和他们的土著生活方式时，你会在文章中观察到一种温和的加速。
“The next time I butcher I’ll have my own story to tell, my own memory to share, knowledge to offer.
“下次我屠宰时，我将讲述自己的故事，分享自己的记忆，提供知识。
One more voice to add to the chorus on those nights when you’re out in the desert under the night sky, no sound for miles, just the moon and the ground beneath you, reminding you it’s all real.
当你在夜空下的沙漠中的那些夜晚，又一个声音加入到合唱中，数英里之外没有任何声音，只有月亮和你脚下的地面，提醒你这一切都是真实的。
That and your full stomach.
还有你饱饱的肚子。
Generations heard through wind, the air, the stirring gleaming stars.
几代人通过风、空气和闪烁的星星听到了声音。
All that knowledge, all that story, all that beauty,” he writes.
所有这些知识、所有故事、所有美丽，”他写道。
Be sure to make time for this piece; it will ignite your sense of wonder and spark your curiosity, feeding you in a way that’s truly satisfying.
一定要为这篇文章腾出时间；它会点燃你的好奇心，激发你的好奇心，以一种真正令人满意的方式满足你。
—KS
—KS
## We’re More Ghosts Than People
## 我们更像是鬼而不是人
Hanif Abdurraqib | The Paris Review | October 16, 2023 | 3,922 words
哈尼夫·阿卜杜勒拉吉卜 |巴黎评论 | 2023 年 10 月 16 日 | 3,922 字
Not long after I started at Longreads, I put together a reading list detailing some of my favorite pieces of video game writing over the previous decade.
加入 Longreads 后不久，我整理了一份阅读清单，详细列出了过去十年中我最喜欢的一些电子游戏写作作品。
If people could enjoy reviews of movies they haven’t seen, I reasoned, then they could do the same with gaming criticism and journalism—even if they’d never held a controller.
我推断，如果人们可以享受对他们没有看过的电影的评论，那么他们也可以对游戏评论和新闻做同样的事情——即使他们从未持有过控制器。
That conviction hasn’t wavered in the years since; however, this year brought a piece powerful enough to vault back through time and land on that list.
从那以后的几年里，这一信念一直没有动摇。然而，今年带来了一件足够强大的作品，足以穿越时空并登上该名单。
Hanif Abdurraqib’s Paris Review essay (which also appears in the newly published collection Critical Hits) is nominally about the experience of playing Red Dead Redemption 2, Rockstar Games’ critically acclaimed title set in the American West in 1899.
Hanif Abdurraqib 的《巴黎评论》文章（也出现在新出版的 Critical Hits 合集中）名义上是关于玩 Red Dead Redemption 2 的体验，这是 Rockstar Games 广受好评的游戏，背景设定在 1899 年的美国西部。
The word “nominally” carries more weight than usual, though.
不过，“名义上”这个词比平时更重要。
In Abdurraqib’s able hands, the game instead becomes a portal to grief and salvation, futility and loss.
在阿卜杜拉吉布的手中，这款游戏反而成为了悲伤和拯救、徒劳和失落的门户。
Some characters can’t be redeemed by virtue of their programming.
有些角色无法通过其编程来兑换。
Others can.
其他人可以。
The trajectory of the character of you is another story altogether.
你的性格轨迹完全是另一个故事。
“If there is a place of judgment where I must stand and plead my case for a glorious and abundant afterlife, I hope that whoever hears me out is interested in nuances, but who’s to say,” Abdurraqib writes.
阿卜杜拉吉布写道：“如果有一个审判的地方，我必须站出来为自己的光荣和丰富的来生辩护，我希望听我说完的人会对细微差别感兴趣，但谁又能说呢。”
“I don’t think about it, until I do.” As with the very best of arts writing, this meditation teases apart its medium’s limitations to find the universal truths and questions embedded within.
“我不会考虑这个问题，直到我考虑为止。”与最好的艺术写作一样，这种冥想梳理了其媒介的局限性，以找到其中蕴含的普遍真理和问题。
No virtual revolver necessary.
无需虚拟左轮手枪。
—PR
——公关
## A Mother’s Exchange for Her Daughter’s Future
## 母亲用女儿的未来换取
Jiayang Fan | The New Yorker | June 5, 2023 | 6,197 words
范嘉阳 |纽约客 | 2023 年 6 月 5 日 | 6,197 字
Jiayang Fan was 25 when her mother was diagnosed with ALS.
范嘉阳 25 岁时，她的母亲被诊断出患有 ALS。
She writes: “The child became the mother’s future, and the mother became the child’s present, taking up residence in her brain, blood, and bones.” This was the first personal piece Fan wrote after her mother’s death; it’s a devastating tale of the immigrant experience in America, of illness, of the intimate and complicated relationship between a mother and daughter.
她写道：“孩子成为母亲的未来，母亲成为孩子的现在，居住在她的大脑、血液和骨骼中。”这是范氏母亲去世后写的第一篇个人作品；这是一个关于美国移民经历、疾病以及母女之间亲密而复杂的关系的毁灭性故事。
Fan’s descriptions of her bedridden mother range from exquisite to grim to satisfyingly peculiar.
范对卧床不起的母亲的描述多种多样，从精致到冷酷，再到令人满意的奇特。
She is “shipwrecked in her own body,” with skin like “rice paper” that will inevitably tear.
她“自己的身体遭遇了海难”，皮肤就像“宣纸”一样，不可避免地会撕裂。
Even a line detailing how literal shit excretes out of her mother’s body—a “rivulet” down the “limp marble of her thigh”—manages to read beautifully.
甚至有一行详细描述了粪便如何从她母亲的身体中排出——一条“小溪”顺着“她大腿上柔软的大理石”流下——读起来也很优美。
Fan writes with vulnerability about caring for an elderly loved one, love and sacrifice, the intertwining of two lives, and the story about them that’s ultimately written.
范以脆弱的心情写下了照顾年长的亲人、爱与牺牲、两种生活的交织，以及最终写成的关于他们的故事。
I had to pause and collect myself a number of times as I thought about my own aging mother, and the decisions made over the course of our lives that have made us who we are.
当我想起年迈的母亲，以及我们一生中做出的决定，这些决定造就了我们现在的样子时，我不得不多次停下来镇定下来。
“One creature, disassembled into two bodies,” Fan writes of their shared life.
“一个生物，分解成两个身体，”范在描述他们共同的生活时写道。
This is extraordinary writing that hit me in a spot deep within.
这是一篇非凡的文章，深深地触动了我的心。
—CLR
—CLR
## How I Survived a Wedding in a Jungle That Tried to Eat Me Alive
## 我是如何在一场试图把我活活吃掉的丛林婚礼中幸存下来的
Melissa Johnson | Outside | July 18, 2023 | 4,273 words
梅丽莎·约翰逊 |外面| 2023 年 7 月 18 日 | 4,273 字
A key sentence in this essay goes as follows, “Behold my nightmare: a tick has bitten my vagina.” The incident—relayed with “the gravitas of Obi-Wan Kenobi describing the destruction of planet Alderaan”—occurs in 2017, while Melissa Johnson is enduring a five-day trek in northern Guatemala to attend the wedding of two ex-military women.
本文的关键句子如下：“看我的噩梦：一只蜱虫咬了我的阴道。”这起事件发生在 2017 年，“欧比旺·克诺比庄重地描述了奥德兰星球的毁灭”，当时梅丽莎·约翰逊正在危地马拉北部进行为期五天的长途跋涉，去参加两名前女军人的婚礼。
(She reflects on how during the days of Trump America, the middle of the jungle felt a safer spot for such nuptials.) Johnson embarks on this quest fresh from harvesting her eggs.
（她反思了在特朗普美国时代，丛林深处对于此类婚礼来说是一个更安全的地方。） 约翰逊在收获鸡蛋后就开始了这一探索。
Single at the age of 39, she is not only wrestling ticks from her “holy garden” but with her fear of missing out on love and motherhood.
39 岁的她单身，不仅要与她的“神圣花园”中的蜱虫搏斗，还要担心失去爱情和母性。
Trudging along the soggy trails, Johnson dwells on her cloudy future with trepidation.
约翰逊沿着湿漉漉的小路艰难前行，惶恐不安地思考着自己阴暗的未来。
But, by the time she is released from the jungle’s insect-infested innards, she has come to terms with the fact that she is an adventurer—someone comfortable with the unknown.
但是，当她从丛林中昆虫出没的内脏中被释放出来时，她已经接受了这样一个事实：她是一名冒险家——一个乐于接受未知事物的人。
This piece has many layers: an adventure story, a character study of people with names such as “Tent Dawg,” and a thoughtful take on aging and motherhood.
这部作品有很多层次：一个冒险故事，对“Tent Dawg”等名字的人物的性格研究，以及对衰老和母性的深思熟虑。
It’s also just plain funny.
这也很有趣。
I loved going through the jungle with Johnson, and I also loved the last sentence of her bio: She had a baby girl in March.
我喜欢和约翰逊一起穿越丛林，我也喜欢她简历的最后一句话：她在三月生了一个女婴。
—CW
—CW
You can also browse all of our year-end collections since 2011 in one place.
您还可以在一处浏览我们自 2011 年以来的所有年终系列。