有没有那么一所房子，会让你想起你

听说The House on Mango Street这本书很久了，它的标签通常是“儿童文学” “适合英语初学者阅读的原版书”。今天用了一个多小时的时间读完了这本小书，和大家分享一下我的一些感悟。

这本书只有109页，它的写法很特殊，由44个“vignettes”构成。vignette在字典中的解释是“a short but interesting piece of writing or section of a film”，它不是短故事也不是诗，而是在两者之间的“lazy poems”，我们称它为“诗小说”好了。

这里面有大人和小朋友，有云和树，也有小烦恼和碎碎念。作者说她希望写美丽的故事，就像是天上的云那么美丽温柔。累了的时候翻开任何一页都能读懂这个故事，感到它的美。因此她在写作上做了一些创新：

She experiments, creating a text that is as succinct and flexible as poetry, snapping sentences into fragments so that the reader pauses, snapping sentences into fragments so that the reader pauses, making each sentence serve her and not the other way round, abandoning quotation marks to streamline the typography and make the page as simple and readable as possible. So that the sentences are pliant as branches and can be read in more ways than one.

对于这种creative writing的写作方式，我们可能读起来有些别扭，因为它有时候会打破语法规则，例如下面这几段：

Close your eyes and they'll go away, her father says, or You're just imagining. （这里省去了引号）

Marin, under the street light, dancing by herself, is singing the same song somewhere. I know. Is waiting for a car to stop, a car to fall, someone to change her life.

Alicia, who inherited her mama's rolling pin and sleepiness, is young and smart and studies for the first time at the university. Two trains and a bus, because she doesn't want to spend her whole life in a factory or behind a rolling pin. Is a good girl, my friend, studies all night and sees the mice, the ones her father says do not exist. Is afraid of nothing except four-legged fur. And fathers.

恐怕只有读英文原文才能体会到它的语言美吧。如果你打算读这本书的话，建议读英文版的，每天读6篇，可以听听它的有声书，一个星期就可以轻松读完。

读她的文字，像是听王菲的歌，你任由那行云和流水穿过你的身体。仿佛可以看得到字里行间的颜色和温度。在Papa Who Wakes Up Tired in the Dark中是这样写父亲的：

Your abuelito is dead, Papa says early one morning in my room. Está muerto, and then as if he just heard the news himself, crumples like a coat and cries, my brave Papa cries. I have never seen my Papa cry and don't know what to do.

...

And I think if my own Papa died what would I do. I hold my Papa in my arms. I hold and hold and hold him.

Abuelito在西班牙语中是grandpa的意思。爷爷去世了，爸爸"crumples like a coat and cries, my brave Papa cries." 两年前我刚回国，一天早上姑姑打电话给妈妈说爷爷走了，我的第一个念头是“我的爸爸没有爸爸了”。去年过年是第一个没有爷爷的团圆饭，爸爸突然潸然泪下，泣不成声。我在想如果有一天我没有爸爸了我该怎么办？能hold and hold and hold him就是大大的幸福了。

很多时候她只是想到了一句话，就有了标题，然后为这个标题写一个故事。她说这些故事会告诉她该在哪里结束，固执的很。例如在The First Job这篇中她讲到“我”这个童工的第一份工作的经历，她觉得孤独害怕，在休息的时候他遇到了一位年长的男人：

He had nice eyes and I didn't feel so nervous anymore. Then he asked if I knew what day it was, and when I said I didn't, he said it was his birthday and would I please give him a birthday kiss. I thought I would because he was so old and just as I was about to put my lips on his cheek, he grabs my face with both hands and kisses me hard on the mouth and doesn't let go.

写到这里时这篇就结束了。为了上学好点的高中她需要去做工，然后就会碰到这样的事情，我觉得心疼愤怒而又无奈。

我所支教的小村子里有一些作坊，很多学校的孩子们放学之后都会去那里做工，周末的时候也去做，一天下来只有十几块钱的报酬。我有个学生她和她的妹妹都在六年级，她们的爸爸酗酒、好赌，现在因为受伤无法出去做工，全靠两个女儿放学后做工来养一家子人（她还有两个弟弟）。女儿劝他不要去赌了，不给他钱的时候，爸爸可能就会把他们暴打一顿。这两个学生的故事会是什么样？该在哪里结束？

这本书的最后一篇里写道：

One day I will pack my bags of books and paper. One day I will say goodbye to Mango. I am too strong for her to keep me here forever. One day I will go away.

Friends and neighbors will say, What happened to that Esperanza? Where did she go with all those books and paper? Why did she march so far away?

They will not know I have gone away to come back. For the ones I left behind. For the ones who cannot out.

我读小学和初中的时候，一直都是住在平房，这让我很自卑。当同学们自报家门的时候会说“xx小区xx楼号x单元xxx”，而我要说“农工商后身大院内” “xx超市对面”，从小我家电视只能收到2个当地台和CCTV1。读初中那年我们租了一个楼房，我进屋的第一件事是看电视，看了一下午，我觉得好像因为一台电视机我的世界一下子就完整了似的。长大后我开始逃离，高中时总离家出走，大学后四处“漂泊”，家开始离我越来越远。

时不时地，我会怀念小时候住的那个平房。对我来说，它就是我的The House on Mango Street。Sandra Cisneros说"I have gone away to come back"。我们离开去寻找自己，去追我们相信的东西。只是，别忘了要回来，以我们希望的方式。