美女与英雄(2)

We never know what a hero will look like. Sometimes a world changing hero is a tiny little teenage girl creeping through the freezing Gobi desert in the dark of night. 💪

我们无从知晓一个英雄外表看起来像什么。有时改变世界的英雄就是一个十几岁的小女孩，在黑漆漆的夜晚穿越冰冷的戈壁滩。

Source
下面是美女英雄的自传小说“In order to live为了活下去”的节选部分。

In 2009, my mother and I were rescued by Christian missionaries, who led us to the Mongolian border with China. From there we walked through the frigid Gobi Desert one endless winter night, following the stars to freedom.

2009年，母亲和我被传教士们营救了，我们被带到中国与蒙古接壤的边界。就是从那里，我们在一个漫长冬夜开始了穿越严峻戈壁滩的行程，一路跟随星星⭐迈向自由。

All this is true, but it is not the whole story.

所有这些都是真的，但并不是整个的故事。

Before now, only my mother knew what really happened in the two years that passed between the night we crossed the Yalu River into China and the day we arrived in South Korea to begin a new life. I told almost nothing of my story to the other defectors and human rights advocates I met in South Korea. I believed that, somehow, if I refused to acknowledge the unspeakable past, it would disappear. I convinced myself that a lot of it never happened; I taught myself to forget the rest.

在此以前，只有我母亲知道在我们跨越鸭绿江进入中国的那个夜晚和到达韩国开始新生活那天的中间两年发生了些什么事情。我几乎从没有对我在韩国遇到的其他北韩叛逃者和人权倡导者讲过那些事。不知怎的，我相信如果我拒绝承认那些不堪回首的过去，它们就会烟消云散。我说服自己许多事从未发生过，我告诉自己忘却它们。

But as I began to write this book, I realized that without the whole truth my life would have no power, no real meaning. With the help of my mother, the memories of our lives in North Korea and China came back to me like scenes from a forgotten nightmare. Some of the images reappeared with a terrible clarity; others were hazy, or scrambled like a deck of cards spilled on the floor. The process of writing has been the process of remembering, and of trying to make sense out of those memories.

但是当我开始写这本书(In order to live为了活下去)时，我意识到若没有全部的真相，我的生活将没有力量，没有真正的意义。在母亲的帮助下，生活在北朝鲜和中国的记忆像一个个忘却的噩梦场景，又浮现在眼前。有些画面可怖得清晰呈现着；有些是模糊的，或像扔在地板上的扑克牌一样散乱。于是，写作的过程变成了回忆的过程，变成了试着使这些回忆变得有意义的过程。

Along with writing, reading has helped me order my world. As soon as I arrived in South Korea and could get my hands on translations of the world’s great books, I began devouring them. Later I was able to read them in English. And as I began to write my own book, I came across a famous line by Joan Didion, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” Even though the writer and I come from such different cultures, I feel the truth of those words echoing inside me. I understand that sometimes the only way we can survive our own memories is to shape them into a story that makes sense out of events that seem inexplicable.

除了写作，阅读也帮我构建世界。一到达韩国，我就狼吞虎咽地读我手能接触到的所有世界名著的翻译本。后来我能读英语原版。我开始写我自己的书了，我读到琼·迪迪安的一句名言：“为了活下去，我们讲述我们自己的故事”。尽管作者和我有着不同的文化背景，我觉得这些话的含义在我心中共鸣着。我深谙，有时我们能存活我们记忆的唯一方式是把它们写成故事，从而使那些无法言说的过往变得有意义。