美国国家公共电台 NPR In 'Green,' A Pre-Teen Wisens Up To His Privilege

 

LAUREN FRAYER, HOST:

It's 1992. Your hair is gelled up, you're sporting high-tops, maybe still listening to Run-DMC on cassette, and that's the setting for a new coming-of-age novel that's also a look at race in America. The book, titled "Green," follows a friendship between two adolescent boys in Boston, one black and one white. The author is Sam Graham-Felsen, and he joins us now from our bureau in New York.

Hi, Sam.

SAM GRAHAM-FELSEN: Hi, Lauren. Thanks so much for having me.

FRAYER: Thanks for coming. So who tells this story? Who's your narrator in "Green"?

GRAHAM-FELSEN: The narrator is a 12-year-old boy named Dave Greenfeld. He is half-Jewish, and his last name is Jewish, and he's pretty embarrassed of his last name. He's one of only three white kids in his entire middle school, and the last thing he wants is to also stand out for being Jewish. So he sort of gives himself a nickname, Green, which he thinks sounds kind of like a cool MC-rapper name.

FRAYER: Green is 12. He's just starting to wrap his head around some big concepts, trying to put them into words. And there's this thing in the book that he calls the force. What does he understand the force to mean?

GRAHAM-FELSEN: So the first time Dave sort of comes up with this concept is - he's watching the news on the day of - or one of the days of the LA riots. And there's a particular moment during the LA riots where a guy named Reginald Denny, who was a trucker, was stopped at an intersection¹ where there was a lot of rioting going on. He was pulled out of his truck and beaten, and he was a white guy and presumably targeted because of that. And Dave sees this on TV, and he finds himself, even though he grew up in a very progressive household - you know, raised by very sort of anti-racist activist² parents - he finds himself sort of rooting for this white trucker, and he feels kind of ashamed and embarrassed of it. And he says that what comes over him is something called the force.

FRAYER: And that force also comes between him and his best friend, Marlon.

GRAHAM-FELSEN: Yes. The force is kind of how Dave sees race interfering³ in all aspects of life. You know, he and Marlon - Marlon is his best friend, his black classmate. They have a really amazing, you know, easy friendship when they are in Dave's house together. They dress up in costumes. They make funny homemade videos. And then when they leave the house, all of a sudden, the simple world that they live in is kind of disrupted by these big, adult forces, including racism⁴.

You know, they - one minute, they're jumping off trampolines, and the next minute, they're out shoveling snow and trying to make money, and no one is coming to the door when they ring the doorbell. Marlon then says, Dave, let me try something. I'll wait around the corner, and you ring the doorbell with your little brother Benno, and if two white kids are ringing the doorbell, I bet they'll answer. And it turns out that Marlon's right. And, you know, it's lots of little microexperiences like this that slowly waken Dave up to the fact that his friend is treated very differently by society than he is.

FRAYER: Marlon is dealing⁵ with some family issues, and yet we never hear his inner thoughts, his perspective. We have the inner life of the white character, but not the black character. Why was that?

GRAHAM-FELSEN: Well, the book is told from Dave's perspective. And, you know, part of the sort of tension in the book is, Dave is in his head. He's - you know, he's a 12-year-old going through adolescence⁶. His body is changing. He's getting his first crushes. You know, frankly⁷, he's a little bit self-absorbed, and he's not fully⁸ able to fully empathize with what his friend Marlon might be going through.

FRAYER: This is your first novel, but you've had some experience writing. You were the chief blogger for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. How did that experience inform your ideas of race and inform the book?

GRAHAM-FELSEN: So as Obama's chief blogger, I was helping⁹ to further the message of hope and change. And I mean, I really felt hopeful that an Obama victory would signal a sea change in America and would bring about, like, real racial progress. I never thought we would turn into a post-racial country overnight, but when I saw the sort of enormity and swiftness of the backlash against Obama from the Tea Party, it really gave me pause.

FRAYER: Is that when you started writing the book or had the idea?

GRAHAM-FELSEN: I started - I had the kind of idea in my head as I was working on the Obama campaign. And then after the campaign, I sort of felt more of a sense of urgency. I wanted to explore, you know, why is racism such an intractable problem in this country? And I realized, hey, you know, I have this fairly unique experience as a white kid who went to mostly black schools growing up, and maybe if I dive as deep as possible into my own past, I can kind of understand what happened to me better and maybe a little bit better about what happened to my city and even my country.

FRAYER: Sam Graham-Felsen is the author of the new novel "Green." Thank you so much, and Happy New Year to you.

GRAHAM-FELSEN: Thank you. Happy New Year to you too.

1 intersection   

n.交集，十字路口，交叉点；[计算机] 交集

参考例句：

• There is a stop sign at an intersection.在交叉路口处有停车标志。
• Bridges are used to avoid the intersection of a railway and a highway.桥用来避免铁路和公路直接交叉。

2 activist   

n.活动分子，积极分子

参考例句：

• He's been a trade union activist for many years.多年来他一直是工会的积极分子。
• He is a social activist in our factory.他是我厂的社会活动积极分子。

3 interfering   

adj. 妨碍的 动词interfere的现在分词

参考例句：

• He's an interfering old busybody! 他老爱管闲事！
• I wish my mother would stop interfering and let me make my own decisions. 我希望我母亲不再干预，让我自己拿主意。

4 racism   

n.民族主义；种族歧视(意识)

参考例句：

• He said that racism is endemic in this country.他说种族主义在该国很普遍。
• Racism causes political instability and violence.种族主义道致政治动荡和暴力事件。

5 dealing   

n.经商方法，待人态度

参考例句：

• This store has an excellent reputation for fair dealing.该商店因买卖公道而享有极高的声誉。
• His fair dealing earned our confidence.他的诚实的行为获得我们的信任。

6 adolescence   

n.青春期，青少年

参考例句：

• Adolescence is the process of going from childhood to maturity.青春期是从少年到成年的过渡期。
• The film is about the trials and tribulations of adolescence.这部电影讲述了青春期的麻烦和苦恼。

7 frankly   

adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说

参考例句：

• To speak frankly, I don't like the idea at all.老实说，我一点也不赞成这个主意。
• Frankly speaking, I'm not opposed to reform.坦率地说，我不反对改革。

8 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。

9 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。