Longreads Best of 2018: Essays

Aram MrjoianA writer, editor, instructor, and PhD student at Florida State University.

Aram Mrjoian 作家、编辑、讲师、佛罗里达州立大学博士生。

## I’m Not Black, I’m Kanye (Ta-Nehisi Coates, the Atlantic)

## 我不是黑人，我是坎耶（Ta-Nehisi Coates，大西洋月刊）

This fall, I taught my freshman composition classes through a pop culture lens.

今年秋天，我通过流行文化的视角教授新生作文课。

Many of my students had been indoctrinated with the false promises of the five-paragraph essay and began the year with the certainty first-person point of view had no place in professional or academic writing.

我的许多学生都被灌输了五段论文的虚假承诺，并且在新的一年开始时就确信第一人称观点在专业或学术写作中没有地位。

After I assigned this personal essay by Ta-Nehisi Coates during week one, most, if not all, of them changed their minds.

在我在第一周布置了塔内西斯·科茨的这篇个人文章后，大多数（如果不是全部）都改变了主意。

Coates dissects the celebrity of Kanye West by interweaving personal narrative, meticulous research, and deft cultural and political commentary.

科茨通过将个人叙述、细致的研究以及巧妙的文化和政治评论交织在一起，剖析了坎耶·维斯特的名人。

It’s a remarkable model for what the personal essay can accomplish.

这是个人论文可以实现的非凡目标的典范。

How Coates ties the personal to the societal to the universal is hard to match.

科茨如何将个人、社会和普遍联系起来，这是无与伦比的。

Coates’s ease in presenting West’s cross-generational relevance also presented an important point of connection between my students and me.

科茨轻松地展示了韦斯特的跨代相关性，也展示了我和我的学生之间的重要联系点。

Regardless of the age gap, we had all grown up on Kanye’s music.

无论年龄差距如何，我们都是在 Kanye 的音乐中长大的。

Our mutual familiarity opened up an important conversation about the divide between art and the artist, as well as the sticky social, cultural, and political complexities of fame.

我们的相互熟悉开启了一场关于艺术与艺术家之间的分歧，以及名声所带来的社会、文化和政治复杂性的重要对话。

Throughout the semester, I found my students returning to this piece.

整个学期，我发现我的学生们又回到了这篇文章。

It became a common point of reference.

它成为一个共同的参考点。

Certainly this essay was a pleasure to teach, but it also had much to teach me, and for that I am grateful.

当然，教授这篇文章是一种乐趣，但它也教会了我很多东西，对此我很感激。

Jaquira Díaz

贾基拉·迪亚斯

Author of Ordinary Girls, a memoir, forthcoming October 2019 from Algonquin Books.

回忆录《普通女孩》的作者，阿尔冈昆图书公司将于 2019 年 10 月出版。

## Hamzah AD 2018 (Kima Jones, Unruly Bodies/Medium)

## Hamzah AD 2018（基马琼斯，不规则的身体/中）

This year, I read several different essay collections, and dozens of essays online, but this is the piece I keep returning to, the one I’ve thought about most.

今年，我读了几本不同的散文集，在网上读了几十篇文章，但这是我不断回顾的一篇文章，也是我思考最多的一篇。

It is joy and pain, an elegy, a celebration.

这是欢乐和痛苦，是挽歌，是庆典。

Every sentence vibrates with poetry.

每一句话都充满诗意。

The image of a young daughter on a bicycle, a father’s favorite memory, a family that’s been separated by incarceration.

一个小女儿骑自行车的画面，一个父亲最喜欢的记忆，一个因监禁而离散的家庭。

The intimate details of the rituals of faith and grief, an inventory of the things a family sends for sustenance, when clearly it is love that sustains them.

信仰和悲伤仪式的亲密细节，一个家庭寄来的维持生计的物品的清单，而显然是爱支撑着他们。

Listen: “Hamzah AD 2018” is a gift.

听着：“Hamzah AD 2018”是一份礼物。

Jen HydeA writer at work on Murmur, a book about how her congenital heart defect drives her to investigate the contemporary and imperiled world we live in.

珍·海德 (Jen Hyde) 是《杂音》(Murmur) 的作家，这本书讲述了她的先天性心脏病如何驱使她去调查我们生活的当代和危险的世界。

## Crying in H Mart (Michelle Zauner, The New Yorker)

## 在 H Mart 哭泣（Michelle Zauner，《纽约客》）

In the last five years, Michelle Zauner lost her mother and aunt to cancer.

在过去的五年里，米歇尔·扎纳 (Michelle Zauner) 的母亲和姨妈因癌症去世。

Crying in H Mart is her emission of grief, an act of collecting memories of these women, “evidence that the Korean half of my identity didn’t die when they did.” She walks through the aisles of this asian grocery store telling us the Korean words for the sundries she picks up and then — more importantly— the memories of her childhood that they ignite.

在 H Mart 哭泣是她悲伤的发泄，是一种收集这些女性记忆的行为，“证明我的韩国一半身份并没有在她们死的时候死去。”她走过这家亚洲杂货店的过道，告诉我们她买的杂货的韩语单词，然后——更重要的是——它们点燃了她的童年记忆。

There is happiness in recalling the way her mom showed her how to eat Jolly Pong, but H Mart also ignites anger for Zauner.

回忆起妈妈教她如何吃 Jolly Pong 的方式，她感到很幸福，但 H Mart 也让 Zauner 感到愤怒。

In the food court, she cries again at the sight of an old Korean woman eating, asking “[w]hy is she here slurping up spicy jjamppong noodles and my mom isn’t?” And then explaining, “Other people must feel this way.

在美食广场，看到一位韩国老妇人吃饭，她又哭了，她问道：“为什么她在这里吃辣酱面，而我妈妈却没有？”然后解释道：“其他人一定也有这样的感觉。

Life is unfair, and sometimes it helps to irrationally blame someone for it.” In H Mart, Zauner gets at what makes grief so difficult a reality: in memories love and tragedy weigh the same, and it is a difficult task to honor both kinds of feelings within.

生活是不公平的，有时非理性地责备某人会有所帮助。”在《H Mart》中，扎纳了解了悲伤为何如此难以成为现实的原因：在记忆中，爱情和悲剧具有同等的分量，而尊重内心的两种情感是一项艰巨的任务。

I’m grateful to Zauner for illustrating this, and I want to tell her directly, I am truly sorry for your loss.

我很感谢 Zauner 向我展示了这一点，我想直接告诉她，我对你的损失感到非常抱歉。

I also admire Zauner for, in the midst of her grief, asking a larger question that I think many of us biracial kids contend with: what does it mean to be Asian in a body that is mixed?

我也很钦佩扎纳，她在悲伤中提出了一个更大的问题，我认为我们许多混血孩子都会遇到这个问题：作为一个混血的身体里的亚洲人意味着什么？

I read Zauner’s essay a few months after giving birth to my son in New York City.

我在纽约生下儿子几个月后读了扎纳的文章。

My own mom had just flown back to California after living with us for two months so that she could show me how to be a mother while also mothering me.

我自己的妈妈在和我们一起生活了两个月后刚刚飞回加利福尼亚，以便她可以向我展示如何成为一名母亲，同时也照顾我。

After 33 years of sometimes wishing for a mom who I could talk to about matters of relationship and career, I was overcome by immense gratitude for the person she is, and along with it a sudden and distinct fear of her mortality.

33年来，我有时希望有一个可以与我谈论人际关系和职业问题的母亲，但我对她这个人充满了巨大的感激之情，同时也对她的死亡突然产生了明显的恐惧。

When I read her essay, Zauner made it okay for me to embrace these feelings, to acknowledge my shame and the precious time I have now.

当我读到她的文章时，扎纳让我可以接受这些感受，承认我的耻辱和我现在拥有的宝贵时间。

Jessica Wilkerson

杰西卡·威尔克森

Historian and author of the forthcoming book, To Live Here, You Have to Fight.

历史学家和即将出版的书《要住在这里，你必须战斗》的作者。

## As Goes the South, So Goes the Nation (Imani Perry, Harper’s)

## 南方走向国家，国家走向（伊玛尼·佩里，哈珀出版社）

In an election year when all eyes were on the South, when many sought to convince themselves — with quick, easy stories — that things are better (or worse) than we thought, Imani Perry’s letter from Alabama takes the reader on a different kind of journey through the South.

在选举年，所有人的目光都集中在南方，当许多人试图用快速、简单的故事来说服自己，事情比我们想象的更好（或更糟）时，伊马尼·佩里来自阿拉巴马州的信带领读者踏上了穿越南方的不同旅程。

Full of love for Alabama’s Black people — ancestors, artists, musicians, and thinkers — Perry maps the Alabama of past and present that she sees in her mind’s eye, in the outlines of her family history.

佩里充满了对阿拉巴马州黑人——祖先、艺术家、音乐家和思想家——的热爱，在她的脑海中，在她的家族历史的轮廓中，描绘了她在脑海中看到的阿拉巴马州的过去和现在。

But the essay is never simply a celebration of a South in which we want to believe.

但这篇文章绝不仅仅是对我们想要相信的南方的庆祝。

She follows every seductive image with another, more painful, and raw reality.

在每一个诱人的形象之后，她都伴随着另一个更痛苦、更原始的现实。

“There are legions of cypress, oak, and loblolly trees, purple blazing star flowers, and all sorts of animals, especially the massive bucks that hunters pridefully kill.” She lulls us into a southern landscape before reminding us: “The Black towns in the Black Belt are now dumping grounds — of fantasies and waste.” It is a powerfully disorienting essay.

“这里有大量的柏树、橡树和火炬树，紫色的炽热星花，还有各种各样的动物，尤其是猎人自豪地猎杀的大量雄鹿。”她让我们沉浸在南方的风景中，然后提醒我们：“黑带的黑人城镇现在成了幻想和浪费的垃圾场。”这是一篇非常令人迷惑的文章。

Danielle Jackson

丹妮尔·杰克逊

Writer, contributing editor at Longreads.

作家，Longreads 的特约编辑。

## The B-Side of Blackness (Zandria Felice Robinson, The Believer)

## 黑人的 B 面（Zandria Felice Robinson、《信徒》）

2018 was chaotic, mournful, elegiac, with a seemingly unending avalanche of losses and disorienting highs and lows.

2018 年是混乱、悲伤、哀伤的一年，似乎永无休止的雪崩般的损失和令人迷惑的高潮和低谷。

Much is unresolved.

还有很多事情没有解决。

In America, our moral crisis may have been years in the making, but right now, it is all especially noisy, and pronounced, with no real end to the nastiness in sight.

在美国，我们的道德危机可能已经酝酿多年，但现在，一切都特别喧闹、明显，而且肮脏的情况还没有真正结束的迹象。

At the start of the year, Trump slurred Haitians while rescinding deportation protections put in place after the 2010 earthquake.

今年年初，特朗普在废除 2010 年地震后实施的驱逐保护措施的同时，还对海地人进行了诽谤。

Last month, Cindy Hyde Smith won an election in Mississippi, the state with the highest number of lynchings in history, despite, (mayb, because of), making public comments about a “public hanging” and laughing it off.

上个月，辛迪·海德·史密斯在密西西比州赢得了选举，该州是历史上私刑数量最多的州，尽管（也许是因为）她公开评论了“公开绞刑”，并一笑置之。

The midterms’ “blue wave” brought us Ayanna Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tahlib, and Lauren Underwood as well as the defeat of Stacey Abrams and Beto O’Rourke and a new awareness of voter suppression.

中期选举的“蓝色浪潮”为我们带来了阿亚娜·普莱斯利、亚历山大·奥卡西奥-科尔特斯、伊尔汗·奥马尔、拉什达·塔利布和劳伦·安德伍德，以及斯泰西·艾布拉姆斯和贝托·奥罗克的失败以及对选民压制的新认识。

Through it all, a flowering of culture happened, with novels and essays and poems that articulated, raged, affirmed, and soothed.

在这一切过程中，文化迎来了繁荣，小说、散文和诗歌纷纷涌现，表达了观点，激怒了人们，肯定了人们，也抚慰了人们。

One of the highlights was this essay, by Zandria Felice Robinson, which expands the possibilities of what an essay can do, its sonics and rhythms, and how it lives on the page.

其中的亮点之一是 Zandria Felice Robinson 撰写的这篇文章，它扩展了一篇文章的可能性、它的声音和节奏，以及它如何在页面上呈现。

It elucidates our moment with a bluesy clarity, taking the political personally, while asking, amidst all the hellfire and confusion, for peace and quiet.

它以忧郁的清晰度阐明了我们的时刻，将政治视为个人，同时在所有地狱之火和混乱中祈求和平与安宁。

Brian Gresko

布赖恩·格雷斯科

A writer, teacher, and the editor of When I First Held You: 22 Critically Acclaimed Writers Talk About the Triumphs, Challenges, and Transformative Experience of Fatherhood.

一位作家、教师和《当我第一次拥抱你时：22位广受好评的作家谈论父亲的胜利、挑战和变革经历》一书的编辑。

## Intrusions (Melissa Febos, Tin House)

## 入侵（Melissa Febos，Tin House）

One of my favorite essayists is Melissa Febos, whose symphonic writing is simultaneously intimate — grounded in memory, place, physicality — and grand, encompassing politics, theory, and history.

我最喜欢的散文家之一是梅丽莎·费博斯（Melissa Febos），她的交响乐写作既亲密——植根于记忆、地点、物质——又宏大，涵盖政治、理论和历史。

She’s in top form in “Intrusions,” from Tin House, Issue 77.

她在《Tin House》第 77 期的“入侵”中处于最佳状态。

After a tense scene in which she’s propositioned by an unseen man outside her first-floor window, Febos unpacks the voyeuristic behavior of predatory men.

在经历了一楼窗户外一名看不见的男子向她求婚的紧张场景后，费博斯揭开了掠夺性男子的偷窥行为。

She analyzes how cultural touchstones from Hitchcock to Stranger Things romanticize peeping Toms as lovesick loners with sweet intentions, then draws on first-hand accounts and statistics to reveal the terrifying and terrible truth that this behavior is often prelude to assault.

她分析了从希区柯克到《怪奇物语》的文化试金石如何将偷窥狂浪漫化为怀有甜蜜意图的相思病孤独者，然后利用第一手资料和统计数据揭示了一个可怕的事实，即这种行为往往是袭击的前奏。

As a straight white man, I grew up consuming the noxious culture she deconstructs, and with a father whose advice before a middle school dance consisted of “stare her down, then get in her space.” As Febos writes, patriarchy is “an elegant machinery whose pistons fire silently inside our minds, and whose gleaming gears we mistake for our own jewelry.” Word by word her work calls it out, for which I’m grateful.

作为一个白人异性恋，我从小就消费着她所解构的有害文化，我的父亲在中学舞会前的建议包括“盯着她看，然后进入她的空间”。正如费博斯所写，父权制是“一台优雅的机器，它的活塞在我们的脑海里无声地燃烧，而它闪闪发光的齿轮让我们误以为是我们自己的珠宝。”她的作品逐字逐句地呼唤着这一点，对此我深表感激。

Sari BottonEssays editor, Longreads

Sari Botton 长篇读物散文编辑

## My Father’s Body, At Rest and in Motion (Siddhartha Mukherjee, The New Yorker)

## 我父亲的身体，静止和运动（悉达多·慕克吉，《纽约客》）

I was already obsessed with death and dying when I read physician and author Siddhartha Mukherjee’s brilliant braided and reported essay in the January 8th issue of The New Yorker.

当我读到医生兼作家悉达多·穆克吉 (Siddhartha Mukherjee) 在《纽约客》 1 月 8 号发表的精彩文章时，我已经对死亡和临终着迷了。

I had no idea how much more relevant it would become for me in a few months’ time, when suddenly my 89-year-old stepfather would fall ill and spend the last month of his life in a kind of medically-induced limbo.

我不知道几个月后，当我 89 岁的继父突然病倒并在某种医疗原因的困境中度过他生命的最后一个月时，这对我来说会变得多么重要。

Balancing empathy with journalistic and scientific precision, Mukherjee artfully considers the body’s proclivity for homeostasis, which kept his elderly father’s failing body alive for longer than seemed to make sense, after he had begun failing, and falling.

穆克吉巧妙地平衡了同理心与新闻和科学的准确性，他巧妙地考虑了身体的稳态倾向，这种倾向使他年迈的父亲在开始衰弱和跌倒后，衰弱的身体保持了比看起来合理的时间更长的时间。

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