时间:2019-01-16 作者:英语课 分类:2017年NPR美国国家公共电台9月


英语课

 


LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:


Houston is beginning the long road to recovery after an historic flooding. And residents are just beginning to come to terms with the damage. Among those residents are the first responders, the reporters, the doctors but also the artists and the writers that form the cultural lifeblood of any city. We invited author Gwendolyn Zepeda to talk about her experience with Houston. She's a native Houstonian and was the city's first poet laureate. She joins us now via Skype. Welcome to the program.


GWENDOLYN ZEPEDA: Hey, Lulu. Thanks for having me.


GARCIA-NAVARRO: First of all, how did you weather this storm?


ZEPEDA: We, thank Godfully, (ph) did really well. Our house stayed dry. You know, we spent two nights awake waiting to see if our house would stay dry. But we did great. So I can't complain.


GARCIA-NAVARRO: You know there's been a huge spotlight 1 on Houston during the hurricane and now in its aftermath. Do you feel like Houston's been characterized properly? What are we missing from the story of Houston and the city that you know?


ZEPEDA: I feel like it's being mischaracterized very strongly in a number of different ways. I felt like, you know, almost before the storm even ended, there were comments online about how we're all conservative, white, redneck people. And, therefore, we deserve this, which is, I mean, not true if you know anything about Houston. We've had Democratic mayors at least since the '80s. And this is actually the most diverse city in the United States. So it was interesting to see that people still had those really old stereotypes 2 that we're a bunch of, you know, cowboys who hate everyone.


There were things about religion - that we are part of the Bible Belt. And, therefore, none of us believe in climate change. And we all expected God to save us from the hurricane. It's like we're in a bubble where we're all trying to be as optimistic as we can and trying to help each other. So seeing the way we look to outsiders - it really did shock me a lot.


GARCIA-NAVARRO: What do you want outsiders to know about Houston? What keeps you there?


ZEPEDA: (Laughter) Sometimes, I feel like I - it's OK for them to not know the truth about why I love Houston because we have too many people here, obviously. That's why they keep building things, and that's why we keep flooding. But to me, I always come back to Houston's diversity probably because I'm the child of an interethnic marriage. And I'm married to someone who is not the same ethnicity as me. I'm always really fascinated by the ethnic 3 diversity here and the fact that this is a city that has always been welcoming to not only immigrants from all over the world but refugees. People can just come here and just always find the food that your people eat. Wherever you came from, we have your food here. We have your religion. And just come here and make a life for yourself. And that's what I love about it.


GARCIA-NAVARRO: You wrote a poem called "After The Hurricane." It's not specifically, obviously, about Hurricane Harvey, as it was written after Tropical Storm Allison hit Houston in 2001. Tell us a little bit about that poem and its message.


ZEPEDA: So I was trying to write a poem that expressed my thoughts about Houston. And Allison was not a hurricane. But I lived through a couple of other hurricanes. And I felt like there was one particular day right after the floods of Allison that just sort of encapsulated how I see our city.


GARCIA-NAVARRO: In the poem there's a scene of everyone standing 4 near the freeway. People are selling corn and tacos from carts. And people are already making plans. What does that say to you about, maybe, what we can expect from Houstonians after this terrible event?


ZEPEDA: Well, to me, the thing about the poem - it's not only people are making tacos and selling them. But everyone who didn't make food to sell is thinking, oh, man, next hurricane, I'm totally going to buy some food and be ready to sell food. Like, everything's an opportunity here.


GARCIA-NAVARRO: Gwendolyn Zepeda is the author of "Houston, We Have A Problema" and the city's first poet laureate. Thank you very much.


ZEPEDA: Thank you. Thanks for having me.



n.公众注意的中心,聚光灯,探照灯,视听,注意,醒目
  • This week the spotlight is on the world of fashion.本周引人瞩目的是时装界。
  • The spotlight followed her round the stage.聚光灯的光圈随着她在舞台上转。
n.老套,模式化的见解,有老一套固定想法的人( stereotype的名词复数 )v.把…模式化,使成陈规( stereotype的第三人称单数 )
  • Such jokes tend to reinforce racial stereotypes. 这样的笑话容易渲染种族偏见。
  • It makes me sick to read over such stereotypes devoid of content. 这种空洞无物的八股调,我看了就讨厌。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
adj.人种的,种族的,异教徒的
  • This music would sound more ethnic if you played it in steel drums.如果你用钢鼓演奏,这首乐曲将更具民族特色。
  • The plan is likely only to aggravate ethnic frictions.这一方案很有可能只会加剧种族冲突。
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的
  • After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
  • They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。
学英语单词
acidified milk
acute hypocorticoidism
agol
anonymous server
antediluvian patriarch
antisubmarine cruiser
antisymmetric cryptology
archivolts
automatic scribing pattern
Autophone
be beat
breeder element assembly
cable in lead
combinatorialists
complete but imperfect information
complicateder
contraposed shoreline
Creighton, James Edwin
crowfoot cell
dalbergia retusas
data flow chart
demarcators
descriptive sociology
detokenizing
dioxocane
direct debiting
evenness transducer
explicability
fellar
Filipstad
godlessly
groove casts
hexital
hexose monophosphate dehydrogenase
howths
HTTP over SSL
ic assembling
implicit structure
infidel
jammes
Kachin Hills
Lehman Aggregate Bond Index
life-insurance company
light pen interrupt
maults
maxillotomy
Michów
militar
military condition
motor vehicle tax
mushy chick disease
mutual graft versus host disease
Münsterhausen
negligees
oil seal housing
ornamenter
orthodromic map projection
other rewritable optical disc drives
output energy stability
overcarking
paramount equity
pedipalps
plastic wire
predicted intercept course
prospective policy
pyrophosphoric acids
regenerative-turbine pump
reincubation
Round Lake Beach
sagoff
sancteous
security kernel validation
Shalav
shoo-fly pie
silicon sulfide bromide
single row separable ball bearing
sino-atrial region
Skallingen
sloughful
Sobolev inequality
sow-bread
Stanley, Freelan
steam-set ink
stretching motion
sulcus centralis
target designator controller
three-wheel
Tom'
trill-key
two-legs
uk shop
underpinning in economic theory
unipotential emitting surface
unmassed
unmercenary
video-recording
wattless power measurement
whitlowwort
windier
wussed out
yin fever
Yotsukaido