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| OUR MISSING HEARTS, by Celeste Ng | 《我们失去的心》（Our Missing Hearts），作者：伍绮诗 |
| The definition of “dystopia” in the Oxford English Dictionary is bald and to the point: “An imaginary place in which everything is as bad as possible.” | 《牛津英语词典》对“反乌托邦”(dystopia)一词的定义直截了当：“一个想像中的地方，在那里，一切要多糟糕就有多糟糕。” |
| Literature is full of examples. In “The Time Machine,” the Morlocks feed and clothe the Eloi, then eat them. “The Handmaid’s Tale” deals with state-sanctioned rape. The firefighters in “Fahrenheit 451” incinerate books instead of saving them. In “1984”’s infamous Room 101, Winston Smith is finally broken when a cage filled with rats is dumped over his head. In “Our Missing Hearts,” Celeste Ng’s dystopian America is milder, which makes it more believable — and hence, more upsetting. | 在文学作品中有很多关于反乌托邦的例子。在《时间机器》(The Time Machine)中，莫洛克人给艾洛伊人提供食物和衣服，然后吃掉他们。《使女的故事》(The Handmaid’s Tale)讲的是受国家许可的强奸行为。在《华氏451度》(Fahrenheit 451)中，消防队员负责烧书，而不是救书于火。在《1984》臭名昭著的101号房间里，一个装满老鼠的笼子被扔到温斯顿·史密斯头上，他终于崩溃了。而在《我们失去的心》中，伍绮诗笔下的反乌托邦美国比较温和，这让它更可信——因此也更加令人不安。 |
| Noah Gardner, known as Bird, is a 12 year-old Chinese American living with his father in Cambridge, Mass. His mother is a fugitive, on the run because she wrote a supposedly subversive poem titled “All Our Missing Hearts.” America is living under PACT — the Preserving American Culture and Traditions Act — which became law during a confused and economically disastrous period known as the Crisis. (We’re given more details about this Crisis than we actually need.) | 诺亚·加德纳绰号“鸟儿”，是一个12岁的华裔美国人，和父亲住在马萨诸塞州的康布里奇。他的母亲是一名逃犯，她之所亡命天涯是因为写了一首被认为具有颠覆性的诗作《我们所有失去的心》。在这本书中， PACT——《保护美国文化和传统法案》——主导着美国人的生活，它在一个被称为“危机”的混乱和经济灾难时期变成了法律。（关于这场“危机”的种种巨细靡遗，超出了我们实际需要的程度。） |
| Before the Crisis, Bird’s father was a linguist. Now he works in a library, shelving books. In Ng’s version of the American Nightmare, there’s no need to burn books. “We pulp them,” a helpful librarian tells Bird. (Bird doesn’t tell her he’s picturing book bonfires, but she intuits it.) “Much more civilized, right? Mash them up, recycle them into toilet paper. Those books wiped someone’s rear end a long time ago.” | 危机之前，鸟儿的父亲是一名语言学家。如今他在图书馆工作，负责图书上架。在伍绮诗版本的美国噩梦中，没有必要烧书。“我们把它们化成纸浆，”一位热心的图书管理员告诉鸟儿。（鸟儿没有告诉她自己在想象焚书的大火，但她凭直觉就知道了。）“更文明，对吧？把它们捣烂，循环使用做成厕纸。那些书早就给人擦屁股了。” |
| Less gaudy than firefighters burning books, but more believable. The empty shelves Bird sees in his father’s library speak volumes. | 这没有消防员烧书来得夸张，却更可信。鸟儿在父亲的图书馆里看到的空书架说明了很多问题。 |
| Under PACT, the children of parents considered culturally or politically subversive are “re-placed” in foster families. When Bird is given a clue to his mother’s whereabouts he goes in search of her, and much of Ng’s firmly written and well-executed novel deals with his adventures along the way. In that sense, the book is a classic tale of the hero’s journey, said hero young enough to make the trip from innocence to experience with surprisingly little bitterness directed toward the parent who has abandoned him. That his mother, Margaret Miu, had no choice would make no difference to most children, it seems to me; abandoned is abandoned. | 根据PACT，如果父母在文化或政治上被视为煽动分子，子女将被“重新安置”到寄养家庭。当鸟儿得到母亲的下落后，便动身去寻找她，伍绮诗这部紧凑娴熟之作大部分都是在描写鸟儿一路的冒险经历。从这个意义上说，这本书是一个典型的英雄之旅故事，说的是年轻的英雄从天真无邪到富有经验的旅程，令人惊讶的是，他对抛弃了自己的父母几乎不怀怨恨之情。在我看来，他的母亲玛格丽特·缪虽然别无选择，但对大多数孩子来说，抛弃就是抛弃，是不存在差别的。 |
| We have heard this tale of government scapegoating before, which adds to its power rather than detracting from it. Hitler blamed the Jews for Germany’s economic malaise. Trump told us to fear migrant caravans full of “bad hombres.” Here it’s Asian people in general and Chinese Americans in particular who are held responsible for everything that’s gone wrong — blame those who don’t look like White America. In New York’s Chinatown, street names have been censored: “Someone — everyone — has tried to make the Chinese disappear.” Flag pins decorate every lapel. | 我们以前也听说过这种政府找寻替罪羊的故事，这会强化而不是削弱它的权力。希特勒将德国经济不振归咎于犹太人。特朗普告诉我们要害怕装满“坏蛋”的移民大篷车。在这本书里，亚裔，尤其是华裔美国人，要为所有的错误负责——反正错的总是那些长得不像美国白人的人。在纽约的华埠，街道名遭到审查，“有人——所有人——都想让华人消失。”每个人的翻领上都别着国旗徽章。 |
| Because Ng’s storytelling is so calm — serene, almost — the occasional explosions of violence are authentically horrifying, as when Bird observes a man punch a Chinese woman, knock her to the ground, then kick her repeatedly. There is no reason except for her otherness … and perhaps the fact that she looks well off. He then kills her little dog, breaking its back “the way he might crush a soda can, or a cockroach.” | 因为伍绮诗的叙事是如此平静——甚至近乎安详，偶尔爆发的暴力才显得真实可怕，比如鸟儿看到一个男人打了一个华裔女人，把她打倒在地，然后不住地踢她。无缘无故，除了她的异类身份……也许还因为她看起来很富有。然后，他杀死了她的小狗，折断了它的背，“就像压碎一个汽水罐或者碾死一只蟑螂那样。” |
| On another level, “Our Missing Hearts” is a meditation on the sometimes accidental power of words. Why are Mr. Gardner’s library shelves so empty? Because students must not have access to books that “might expose them to dangerous ideas.” This isn’t dystopian fiction but actual fact, as rancorous school curriculum meetings and protests across the United States have proved. The Florida Parental Rights Bill, signed by Governor DeSantis in March of this year, is basically a free pass to text censorship. | 在另一个层面上，《我们失去的心》是对文字有时不经意间产生的力量的沉思。加德纳先生的图书馆书架为什么空空荡荡？因为学生不能读到“可能令他们接触到危险思想”的书籍。这不是反乌托邦小说，而是真切的现实，美国各地充满敌意的学校课程会议和抗议活动已经证明了这一点。德桑蒂斯州长在今年3月签署的《佛罗里达州父母权利法案》基本上是对教育内容进行审查的许可证。 |
| When a Black girl is shot dead at an anti-PACT rally, the phrase “Our Missing Hearts” — emblazoned on the sign she was carrying; she’d read Margaret’s poem — becomes a rallying cry. Bird’s mother had no intention of achieving fame or infamy because of that line; it was from a poem about — of all things — pomegranates. Rodney King (“Can’t we all just get along?”) and George Floyd (“I can’t breathe”) weren’t intentionally phrasemaking either. King’s line was an off-the-cuff plea for peace and Floyd only wanted to get the cop off his neck before he died. Yet these lines resonate. Governments are right to fear words. They can change hearts and topple tyrannies. By the same token, they can increase the chokeholds of some tyrants: witch hunt, fake news, I rest my case. | 一名黑人女孩在一次反PACT集会上被枪杀了，她举的标语上写着“我们失去的心”；她读过玛格丽特的诗——这句诗成了战斗口号。鸟儿的母亲无意因为这句诗而获得美誉或恶名；它其实是一首关于石榴的诗。罗德尼·金（“我们就不能好好相处吗?”）和乔治·弗洛伊德（“我不能呼吸了”）也不是想故意制造金句。金是在不经意间呼吁和平，弗洛伊德只想在死前让警察松开他的脖子。然而这些句子引起了共鸣。政府害怕语言是有道理的。它们可以改变人心，推翻暴政。出于同样的原因，它们也可以帮助暴君收紧桎梏：政治猎巫、假新闻，我不再赘述。 |
| I won’t give away the splendid conclusion of Ng’s book; suffice it to say, the climax deals with the power of words, the power of stories and the persistence of memory. It’s impossible not to be moved by Margaret Miu’s courage, or to applaud her craftiness. Is her final word to the world a kind of propaganda? Yes, but sometimes you have to fight fire with fire. | 我不会透露伍绮诗这本书精彩的结尾；我只想说，高潮部分充分体现了文字的力量、故事的力量和记忆的持久性。我们不可能不被玛格丽特·缪的勇气打动，也不可能不为她的狡猾鼓掌。她对世界说的最后一句话是一种宣传吗？是的，但有时你得以毒攻毒。 |
| There are peculiar lapses that must be noted. Covid-19 doesn’t exist in “Our Missing Hearts,” although there can be no doubt that the pandemic has given rise to dark conspiracies having to do with China, where Covid first appeared. Donald Trump and others were happy to call it the China Flu. Ng likewise ignores social media — there’s a single glancing mention near the end of the book — although few innovations in human history have done more to focus and amplify racist tropes. In fact, social media encourages large numbers of people to deliberately turn away from the truth. | 在此也必须指出一些不足之处。在《我们失去的心》中，新冠并不存在，尽管毫无疑问，这种大流行引发了与新冠病毒首次出现的地方——中国有关的黑暗阴谋。特朗普和其他一些人很乐意称之为“中国流感”。同样，伍绮诗还忽视了社交媒体——只在书的结尾匆匆提起了一次——尽管人类历史上很少有什么创新能像社交媒体这样专注和放大种族主义桥段。事实上，社交媒体鼓励许多人刻意回避真相。 |
| Ng succeeds in spite of these occasional blind spots, partly because her outrage is contained and focused, and mostly because she is often captivated by the very words she is using. Bird’s father’s oldest habit, we’re told, is “taking words apart like old clocks to show the gears still ticking inside.” The gears in this story for the most part mesh very well. And Bird is a brave and believable character, who gives us a relatable portal into a world that seems more like our own every day. | 尽管偶有盲点存在，伍绮诗还是成功了，部分原因是她的愤怒克制而专注，而更主要的原因是，她经常被自己使用的文字迷住。我们了解到，鸟儿的父亲有一个最古老的习惯，“像拆开旧钟一样拆开文字，以便显示里面的齿轮仍在滴答作响。”这个故事里的齿轮大部分都啮合得很好。鸟儿是一个勇敢而可信的角色，为我们提供了一个与你我皆有关的入口，它通往这样一个世界——那里似乎每天都更像我们身处的现实世界。 |
| OUR MISSING HEARTS, by Celeste Ng | 352 pp. | Penguin Press | $29 | 《我们失去的心》，伍绮诗著，352页，| 企鹅出版社 | 29美元 |
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