布鲁克林有棵树(节选) 我想，在我成长过程中让我最受感动的一本书就是《布鲁克林有棵树》了。 ——奥普拉·温弗瑞 如果错过了《布鲁克林有棵树》，你将失去一次重要的人生体验……这是一个深刻理解童年与家庭关系的动人故事。 ——《纽约时报》
《布鲁克林有棵树》是一本让人洞悉个体如何能变得更坚强、坚定、睿智的书。最重要的，它谈及人要生存所需的人格力量，也就成了一篇关于爱、信任与磨难的文章。正是在读完这本书后，我平生第一次认识到，尽管磨难是一次艰难的考验，但它确实是个人所能体验的最积极的人生影响因素之一。 ——美国读者
“There’s a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky. It grows in 1)boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps. It grows up out of cellar 2)gratings. It is the only tree that grows out of cement. It grows lushly…survives without sun, water, and seemingly without earth. It would be considered beautiful except that there are too many of it.”
3)Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn, New York. Especially in the summer of 1912. Somber, as a word, was better. But it did not apply to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Prairie was lovely and Shenandoah had a beautiful sound, but you couldn’t fit those words into Brooklyn. Serene was the only word for it; especially on a Saturday afternoon in summer.
Late in the afternoon the sun 4)slanted down into the mossy yard belonging to Francie Nolan’s house, and warmed the worn wooden fence. Looking at the shafted sun, Francie had that same fine feeling that came when she recalled the poem they recited in school.
This is the forest primeval. The murmuring
pines and the 5)hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green,
6)indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like 7)Druids of eld.
The one tree in Francie’s yard was neither a pine nor a hemlock. It had pointed leaves which grew along green switches which radiated from the bough and made a tree which looked like a lot of opened green umbrellas. Some people called it the Tree of Heaven. It grew lushly, but only in the 8)tenements districts.
You saw a small one of these trees through the iron gate leading to someone’s yard and you knew that soon that section of Brooklyn would get to be a tenement district. The tree knew. It came there first. Afterwards, poor foreigners seeped in and the quiet old 9)brownstone houses were hacked up into flats, feather beds were pushed out on the window sills to air and the Tree of Heaven flourished. That was the kind of tree it was. It liked poor people.
That was the kind of tree in Francie’s yard. Its umbrellas curled over, around and under her third-floor fire-escape. An eleven-year-old girl sitting on this fire-escape could imagine that she was living in a tree. That’s what Francie imagined every Saturday afternoon in summer.
For Francie, Saturday started with the trip to the 10)junkie. She and her brother, Neeley, like other Brooklyn kids, collected rags, paper, metal, rubber, and other junk and 11)hoarded it in locked cellar 12)bins or in boxes hidden under the bed. All week Francie walked home slowly from school with her eyes in the 13)gutter looking for tin foil from cigarette packages or chewing gum wrappers. This was melted in the lid of a jar.