美国历史上最经典演讲 A LEFTHANDED COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS_美国经典英文演讲20篇
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A LEFT-HANDED COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS
(1983)
I want to thank the Mills College Cla of '83 for offering me a rare chance: to speak aloud in public in the language of women.I know there are men graduating, and I don't mean to exclude them, far from it.There is a Greek tragedy where the Greek says to the foreigner, “If you don't understand Greek, please signify by nodding.” Anyhow, commencements are usually operated under the unspoken agreement that everybody graduating is either male or ought to be.That's why we are all wearing these twelfth-century drees that look so great on men and make women look either like a mushroom or a pregnant stork.Intellectual tradition is male.Public speaking is done in the public tongue, the national or tribal language;and the language of our tribe is the men's language.Of course women learn it.We're not dumb.If you can tell Margaret Thatcher from Ronald Reagan, or Indira Gandhi from General Somoza, by anything they say, tell me how.This is a man's world, so it talks a man's language.The words are all words of power.You've come a long way, baby, but no way is long enough.You can't even get there by selling yourself out: because there is theirs, not yours.Maybe we've had enough words of power and talk about the battle of life.Maybe we need some words of weakne.Instead of saying now that I hope you will all go forth from this ivory tower of college into the Real World and forge a triumphant career or at least help your husband to and keep our country strong and be a succe in everythingas I know you already havethat's their game.Not against men, eitherthe valley of the shadow, the deep, the depths of life.All that the Warrior denies and refuses is left to us and the men who share it with us and therefore, like us, can't play doctor, only nurse, can't be warriors, only civilians, can't be chiefs, only indians.Well so that is our country.The night side of our country.If there is a day side to it, high sierras, prairies of bright gra, we only know pioneers' tales about it, we haven't got there yet.We're never going to get there by imitating Machoman.We are only going to get there by going our own way, by living there, by living through the night in our own country.So what I hope for you is that you live there not as prisoners, ashamed of being women, consenting captives of a psychopathic social system, but as natives.That you will be at home there, keep house there, be your own mistre, with a room of your own.That you will do your work there, whatever you're good at, art or science or tech or running a company or sweeping under the beds, and when they tell you that it's second-cla work because a woman is doing it, I hope you tell them to go to hell and while they're going to give you equal pay for equal time.I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need to be dominated.I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people.And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you will remember that darkne is your
country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is.Our roots are in the dark;the earth is our country.Why did we look up for bleing-instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there.Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon.Not from above, but from below.Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourished, where human beings grow human souls.
