A long time ago, there lived a Giant, a Selfish Giant, whose stunning garden was the most beautiful in all the land. One evening, this Giant came home and found all these children playing in his garden, and he became enraged. "My own garden is my own garden!" the Giant said. And he built this high wall around it.
Bio jednom jedan džin, sebični džin, čiji je zadivljujući vrt bio najlepši u celoj zemlji. Jedne noći, ovaj džin je došao kući, zatekao gomilu dece kako se igraju u njegovom vrtu i pobesneo. "Moj vrt je samo moj i ničiji više!" reče džin. Potom je sagradio jedan visoki zid oko njega.
The author Oscar Wilde wrote the story of "The Selfish Giant" in 1888. Almost a hundred years later, that Giant moved into my Brooklyn childhood and never left. I was raised in a religious family, and I grew up reading both the Bible and the Quran. The hours of reading, both religious and recreational, far outnumbered the hours of television-watching. Now, on any given day, you could find my siblings and I curled up in some part of our apartment reading, sometimes unhappily, because on summer days in New York City, the fire hydrant blasted, and to our immense jealousy, we could hear our friends down there playing in the gushing water, their absolute joy making its way up through our open windows. But I learned that the deeper I went into my books, the more time I took with each sentence, the less I heard the noise of the outside world. And so, unlike my siblings, who were racing through books, I read slowly -- very, very slowly.
Pisac Oskar Vajld napisao je priču "Sebični džin" 1888. godine. Skoro sto godina kasnije, taj džin je došao u moje detinjstvo u Bruklinu i nikada nije otišao. Odrasla sam u religioznoj porodici, čitajući i Bibliju i Kuran. Mnogo više sam čitala religiozne knjige, ali sam i čitala iz zabave, nego što sam gledala televiziju. Svakog dana mogli ste pronaći moju braću, sestre i mene sklupčane u nekom delu stana kako čitamo. Nekada nam se to ne bi svidelo zato što bi letnjih dana u Njujorku hidrant pukao i bili bismo izuzetno ljubomorni kada bismo čuli svoje prijatelje kako se igraju dole u mlazovima vode. Njihova neopisiva sreća bi pronašla svoj put do naših otvorenih prozora. Međutim, shvatila sam da što bih se više udubljivala u svoje knjige, što bih sporije čitala svaku rečenicu, manje bih čula buku spoljašnjeg sveta. Za razliku od svoje braće i sestara koji su pretrčavali kroz knjige, ja sam čitala polako - veoma, veoma polako.
I was that child with her finger running beneath the words, until I was untaught to do this; told big kids don't use their fingers. In third grade, we were made to sit with our hands folded on our desk, unclasping them only to turn the pages, then returning them to that position. Our teacher wasn't being cruel. It was the 1970s, and her goal was to get us reading not just on grade level but far above it. And we were always being pushed to read faster. But in the quiet of my apartment, outside of my teacher's gaze, I let my finger run beneath those words. And that Selfish Giant again told me his story, how he had felt betrayed by the kids sneaking into his garden, how he had built this high wall, and it did keep the children out, but a grey winter fell over his garden and just stayed and stayed. With each rereading, I learned something new about the hard stones of the roads that the kids were forced to play on when they got expelled from the garden, about the gentleness of a small boy that appeared one day, and even about the Giant himself. Maybe his words weren't rageful after all. Maybe they were a plea for empathy, for understanding. "My own garden is my own garden."
Ja sam bila to dete koje je prelazilo prstom ispod reči, dok nisam bila odučena od toga jer mi je rečeno da velika deca ne koriste prste. U trećem razredu morali smo da sedimo sa rukama sklopljenim na stolu, odvajajući ih samo da okrenemo stranu i odmah bi ih vraćali u prvobitni položaj. Učiteljica nije bila stroga. Bile su to sedamdesete i njen cilj je bio da nas nauči da čitamo, ne samo na nivou našeg uzrasta već na mnogo višem. Uvek su nas terali da čitamo brže, ali u tišini svog stana, daleko od pogleda svoje učiteljice, ja sam prevlačila prstom ispod reči. Taj sebični džin mi je ponovo ispričao svoj priču, kako se osećao prevarenim kada su se deca ušunjala u njegov vrt, kako je sagradio taj visoki zid koji deca nisu mogla da pređu, ali je zima došla u njegov vrt i nikada više nije otišla. Svakim novim čitanjem saznala sam nešto novo o tvrdom kamenju sa puteva na kojima su deca bila primorana da se igraju kada su bila izbačena iz vrta, o nežnosti malog dečaka koji se pojavio jednog dana, pa čak i o samom džinu. Možda on ipak nije bio besan. Možda je samo želeo da saoseća sa nekim, da ga neko razume. "Moj vrt je samo moj i ničiji više."
Years later, I would learn of a writer named John Gardner who referred to this as the "fictive dream," or the "dream of fiction," and I would realize that this was where I was inside that book, spending time with the characters and the world that the author had created and invited me into. As a child, I knew that stories were meant to be savored, that stories wanted to be slow, and that some author had spent months, maybe years, writing them. And my job as the reader -- especially as the reader who wanted to one day become a writer -- was to respect that narrative.
Mnogo godina kasnije saznala sam za pisca Džona Gardnera koji je to nazivao "fantastičnim snom" ili "snom o fantastici", i shvatila da sam ja bila u toj knjizi, provodeći vreme sa likovima u svetu koji je pisac stvorio i u koji me je pozvao. Kao dete sam znala da u pričama treba uživati, da priče žele da se polako čitaju i da je neki pisac proveo mesece, možda i godine pišući ih, a moj posao čitaoca, posebno čitaoca koji je želeo da jednog dana postane pisac, je da poštujem tu priču.
Long before there was cable or the internet or even the telephone, there were people sharing ideas and information and memory through story. It's one of our earliest forms of connective technology. It was the story of something better down the Nile that sent the Egyptians moving along it, the story of a better way to preserve the dead that brought King Tut's remains into the 21st century. And more than two million years ago, when the first humans began making tools from stone, someone must have said, "What if?" And someone else remembered the story. And whether they told it through words or gestures or drawings, it was passed down; remembered: hit a hammer and hear its story.
Mnogo pre nego što je postojala kablovska, internet, pa čak i telefoni, postojali su ljudi koji su delili ideje, informacije i sećanja kroz priču. To je jedan od najranijih oblika tehnologije koja nas povezuje. Priča da ima nečeg boljeg niz Nil bila je ta koja je poslala Egipćane nizvodno, priča da postoji bolji način da se očuvaju tela mrtvih razlog je zbog kojeg su Tutankamonovi ostaci preživeli do 21. veka. Pre više od dva miliona godina, kada su prvi ljudi počeli da prave oruđe od kamena, neko mora da je pitao: "Šta ako?" i neko drugi se setio te priče. Bez obzira na to da li su je prenosili putem reči, pokreta, ili crteža, priča se prenosila, pamtila se: udari čekićem i saslušaj njegovu priču.
The world is getting noisier. We've gone from boomboxes to Walkmen to portable CD players to iPods to any song we want, whenever we want it. We've gone from the four television channels of my childhood to the seeming infinity of cable and streaming. As technology moves us faster and faster through time and space, it seems to feel like story is getting pushed out of the way, I mean, literally pushed out of the narrative. But even as our engagement with stories change, or the trappings around it morph from book to audio to Instagram to Snapchat, we must remember our finger beneath the words. Remember that story, regardless of the format, has always taken us to places we never thought we'd go, introduced us to people we never thought we'd meet and shown us worlds that we might have missed. So as technology keeps moving faster and faster, I am good with something slower. My finger beneath the words has led me to a life of writing books for people of all ages, books meant to be read slowly, to be savored.
Svet postaje bučniji. Sa kasetofona smo prešli na vokmene, pa na prenosive CD plejere, na ajpode i došli do toga da možemo slušati bilo koju pesmu kad god to želimo. Od četiri televizijska kanala u mom detinjstvu, došli smo do, čini se, beskonačnog broja kanala na kablovskoj i na internetu. Kako nas tehnologija sve brže i brže vodi kroz vreme i prostor, čini se da se priča gubi iz vida. Mislim, bukvalno da se zanemaruje. Čak i kada se naš stav prema pričama menja, ili se njena forma menja od knjige u audio formate, Instagram ili Snepčet moramo se setiti da prevlačimo prstom ispod reči. Pamćenje tih priča, bez obzira na to u kom su obliku nas je uvek vodilo na mesta na koja smo mislili da nikada nećemo ići, upoznalo nas sa ljudima koje nikada nismo mislili da ćemo upoznati i pokazalo nam svetove koje smo možda propustili. S obzirom na to da tehnologija napreduje sve brže i brže, meni prija nešto sporije. Prevlačenje prstom ispod reči dovelo me je do života pisanja knjiga za ljude svih uzrasta, knjige pisane da bi se čitale polako, da se u njima uživa.
My love for looking deeply and closely at the world, for putting my whole self into it, and by doing so, seeing the many, many possibilities of a narrative, turned out to be a gift, because taking my sweet time taught me everything I needed to know about writing. And writing taught me everything I needed to know about creating worlds where people could be seen and heard, where their experiences could be legitimized, and where my story, read or heard by another person, inspired something in them that became a connection between us, a conversation. And isn't that what this is all about -- finding a way, at the end of the day, to not feel alone in this world, and a way to feel like we've changed it before we leave? Stone to hammer, man to mummy, idea to story -- and all of it, remembered.
Moja ljubav prema dubljem i bližem posmatranju sveta, prema potpunom prepuštanju sebe njemu omogućila mi je da uvidim raznorazne pripovedne mogućnosti i pokazala se kao dar, zato što me je sporo čitanje naučilo svemu što je trebalo da znam o pisanju. Pisanje me je naučilo svemu što je trebalo da znam o stvaranju svetova gde bi ljudi mogli da budu viđeni i saslušani, gde bi njihova iskustva mogla da se pretvore u stvarnost i gde bi moja priča, koju bi neko pročitao ili čuo, probudila nešto u njima što bi nas povezalo, postalo razgovor. Nije li u tome poenta - da nađemo način da se na kraju dana ne osećamo kao da smo sami na ovom svetu, da se osećamo kao da smo ga promenili pre nego što sa njega odemo? Kamen u čekić, čovek u mumiju, ideja u priču i sve je to zapamćeno.
Sometimes we read to understand the future. Sometimes we read to understand the past. We read to get lost, to forget the hard times we're living in, and we read to remember those who came before us, who lived through something harder. I write for those same reasons.
Nekada čitamo da bismo razumeli budućnost. Nekada čitamo da bismo razumeli prošlost. Čitamo da bismo se izgubili, da zaboravimo na teška vremena u kojima živimo i čitamo da bismo se setili onih koji su bili tu pre nas, koji su preživeli nešto gore. Ja pišem iz tih istih razloga.
Before coming to Brooklyn, my family lived in Greenville, South Carolina, in a segregated neighborhood called Nicholtown. All of us there were the descendants of a people who had not been allowed to learn to read or write. Imagine that: the danger of understanding how letters form words, the danger of words themselves, the danger of a literate people and their stories. But against this backdrop of being threatened with death for holding onto a narrative, our stories didn't die, because there is yet another story beneath that one. And this is how it has always worked. For as long as we've been communicating, there's been the layering to the narrative, the stories beneath the stories and the ones beneath those. This is how story has and will continue to survive.
Pre nego što smo došli u Bruklin, moja porodica je živela u Grinvilu, Južnoj Karolini, u rasno podeljenom kraju koji se zvao Nikoltaun. Svi u tom naselju bili smo potomci ljudi kojima nije bilo dozvoljeno da uče da čitaju i pišu. Zamislite to: opasnost razumevanja kako slova prave reči, opasnost od samih reči, opasnost od pismenih ljudi i njihovih priča. Uprkos tome što su nam pretili smrću, ako bismo se držali jedne priče, naše priče nisu umrle, zato što je postojala još jedna priča ispod te. Tako su stvari uvek funkcionisale. Od kada komuniciramo, postojali su slojevi u pričama, priče ispod priča i još priča ispod tih. Ovako je priča preživljavala i ovako će nastaviti da preživljava.
As I began to connect the dots that connected the way I learned to write and the way I learned to read to an almost silenced people, I realized that my story was bigger and older and deeper than I would ever be. And because of that, it will continue.
Kada sam počela da povezujem tačkice koje povezuju način na koji sam naučila da pišem sa načinom na koji sam naučila da čitam sa gotovo ućutkanim ljudima, shvatila sam da je moja priča veća, starija i dublja nego što ću ja ikada biti i zbog toga će se ona nastaviti.
Among these almost-silenced people there were the ones who never learned to read. Their descendants, now generations out of enslavement, if well-off enough, had gone on to college, grad school, beyond. Some, like my grandmother and my siblings, seemed to be born reading, as though history stepped out of their way. Some, like my mother, hitched onto the Great Migration wagon -- which was not actually a wagon -- and kissed the South goodbye.
Među tim skoro ućutkanim ljudima bilo je onih koji nikada nisu naučili da čitaju. Njihovi potomci, generacije oslobođene ropstva, ako su bili dovoljno imućni, išli su na fakultete, specijalizacije i dalje od toga. Neki su se, poput moje bake i moje braće i sestara, čini se rodili sa knjigom u rukama, kao da istorija za njih nije ni postojala. Neki su, poput moje majke, skočili na karavan Velike migracije - ne mislim na pravi karavan - i pozdravili se sa Jugom.
But here is the story within that story: those who left and those who stayed carried with them the history of a narrative, knew deeply that writing it down wasn't the only way they could hold on to it, knew they could sit on their porches or their stoops at the end of a long day and spin a slow tale for their children. They knew they could sing their stories through the thick heat of picking cotton and harvesting tobacco, knew they could preach their stories and sew them into quilts, turn the most painful ones into something laughable, and through that laughter, exhale the history a country that tried again and again and again to steal their bodies, their spirit and their story.
Međutim, evo priče ispod te priče: oni koji su otišli i oni koji su ostali nosili su sa sobom istoriju priče, znajući duboko u sebi da napisati priču nije bio jedini način na koji je mogu sačuvati, znajući da su mogli da sednu na svoje terase ili stepenice nakon dugog dana i počnu laganu priču svojoj deci. Znali su da mogu da pevaju svoje priče na vrućini dok beru pamuk, ili sakupljaju duvan. Znali su da mogu da propovedaju svoje priče i ušiju ih u tkanine, pretvore najbolnije priče u nešto smešno i da kroz taj smeh izbace istoriju zemlje koja je iznova i iznova pokušavala da ukrade njihova tela, njihov duh i njihovu priču.
So as a child, I learned to imagine an invisible finger taking me from word to word, from sentence to sentence, from ignorance to understanding.
Tako sam kao dete naučila da zamišljam nevidljivi prst koji me je vodio od reči do reči. od rečenice do rečenice, od neznanja do shvatanja.
So as technology continues to speed ahead, I continue to read slowly, knowing that I am respecting the author's work and the story's lasting power. And I read slowly to drown out the noise and remember those who came before me, who were probably the first people who finally learned to control fire and circled their new power of flame and light and heat. And I read slowly to remember the Selfish Giant, how he finally tore that wall down and let the children run free through his garden. And I read slowly to pay homage to my ancestors, who were not allowed to read at all. They, too, must have circled fires, speaking softly of their dreams, their hopes, their futures. Each time we read, write or tell a story, we step inside their circle, and it remains unbroken. And the power of story lives on.
Kako tehnologija nastavlja da se razvija brzo, ja nastavljam da čitam polako, znajući da poštujem rad pisca i trajnu moć priče. Čitam polako kako bih smanjila buku i setila se onih koji su bili tu pre mene, verovatno prve ljude koji su konačno naučili da upravljaju vatrom i zagospodarili svojom novom moći nad plamenom, svetlošću i vrelinom. Čitam polako da bih se setila sebičnog džina, kako je najzad srušio taj zid i pustio decu da se slobodno igraju u njegovom vrtu. Čitam polako da bih odala počast svojim precima, kojima uopšte nije bilo dozvoljeno da čitaju. I oni mora da su gospodarili vatrama, bojažljivo pričajući o svojim snovima, svojim nadama, svojim budućnostima. Svaki put kada čitamo, pišemo ili pričamo priču, mi ulazimo u njihov krug i on ostaje neprekinut, a moć priče živi dalje.
Thank you.
Hvala.
(Applause)
(Aplauz)