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Unit 1 Paper Tigers
第一单元 纸老虎
Wesley Yang
卫斯理·杨
Millions of Americans must feel estranged from their own faces. But every self-estranged individual is estranged in his own way. I, for instance, am the child of Korean immigrants, but I do not speak my parents' native tongue. I have never dated a Korean woman. I don't have a Korean friend. Though I am an immigrant, I have never wanted to strive like one.
一定有无数的美国人对他们自己的长相会有一种疏离感，但是其中每个人的原因却又不尽相同。以我自己为例，我是韩国移民的后裔，但我却不会讲我父母的母语，我从未跟韩国女性约过会，甚至都没有韩国朋友。虽然我是移民，但是我从未想过像移民那样努力奋斗。
You could say that l am a banana. But while I don't believe our roots necessarily define us, I do believe there are racially inflected assumptions wired into our neural circuitry. And although I am in most respects devoid of Asian characteristics, I do have an Asian face.
你可能会说我是亚裔美国人。虽然我并不认为一个人的种族出身就会决定他的一切，但我相信对各个种族的成见已经深深地植入了我们的思想里。尽管在很多方面，我已经没了什么亚洲人的特点，但我确实长着一张亚洲人的脸。
Here is what I sometimes suspect my face signifies to other Americans: An invisible person, barely distinguishable from a mass of faces that resemble it. A conspicuous person standing apart from the crowd and yet devoid of any individuality. An icon of so much that the culture pretends to honor it in fact patronizes and exploits. Not just people "who are good at math" and play the violin, but a mass of stifled, repressed, abused, conformist quasi-robots who simply do not matter, socially or culturally.
我有时怀疑我的长相对于其他美国人来说代表着什么：像一个长着大众脸的隐形人；一个站在人群里很显眼但毫无个性的人；一个美国充化表面上十分尊重而实际上却鄙视并利用的形象。我们不只是那些“数学学得很好”和会拉小提琴的人，而且是一群憋屈得要死、压迫得不行、被虐得快残了的循规蹈矩的半机器人，对社会和文化根本就没什么影响力。
