布魯克林有棵樹(節選) 我想，在我成長過程中讓我最受感動的一本書就是《布魯克林有棵樹》了。 ——奧普拉·溫弗瑞 如果錯過了《布魯克林有棵樹》，你將失去一次重要的人生體驗……這是一個深刻理解童年與家庭關系的動人故事。 ——《紐約時報》

《布魯克林有棵樹》是一本讓人洞悉個體如何能變得更堅強、堅定、睿智的書。最重要的，它談及人要生存所需的人格力量，也就成了一篇關于愛、信任與磨難的文章。正是在讀完這本書后，我平生第一次認識到，盡管磨難是一次艱難的考驗，但它確實是個人所能體驗的最積極的人生影響因素之一。 ——美國讀者

“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.