教授 玛丽戈登 '71解析:选C. McIntosh 教授 in English 和 Writing 和 an award-winning author, has spent her career examining some of the deepest human experiences, 包括我们与信仰的联系, 通过文学. As a sought-after author, she has been featured in 《世界十大电子游戏平台》 (which published a rave review of her most recent book), 比尔·莫耶的 信仰与理性 系列和 美国杂志等等. She has taught at Barnard for nearly three decades.
Gordon has published seven bestselling novels over four decades (including The Love of My Youth, 最后的付款, 珍珠)，一本中篇小说集 (《世界十大电子游戏平台》), six works of nonfiction (including the memoirs 影人 和 围着妈妈转; two Joan of Arc biographies; 和 Reading Jesus: A Writer's Encounter with the Gospels), 和 three collections of fiction (including 玛丽·戈登的故事，该作品被授予 故事奖). She has received a Lila Acheson Wallace Reader's Digest Writer's Award 和 a Guggenheim Fellowship 和 was elected to the American Academy of Arts 和 Letters in 2007.
在她最近的小说中， 你的心在那里, about an American woman’s experience in Spain during 和 after the Spanish Civil War, Gordon takes readers across two continents 和 two generations to tell a story of life, 爱, 宗教, 以及无畏的艺术. In this special “将其分解” interview, Gordon explains what the past can teach us about the present.
What inspired you to center the story around the Spanish Civil War from an American woman’s perspective?
Most of what we know about the Spanish Civil War is from a man’s perspective, primarily Ernest Hemingway 和 George Orwell’s. Both of them had a political agenda; they were writing, 比如海明威, in support of the Communists; in Orwell’s, 支持无政府主义者. Both suppressed the negative aspects of the parties they supported, 和 neither acknowledged the complexities 和 contradictions of the people they supported. Both had a romance about the nobility of war, 的流血世界十大电子游戏平台, 我想要一个女人的视角, the perspective of one who tended the shattered 和 destroyed bodies that were far from heroic.
Why did you choose to tell a multi-generational, cross-continental story that spans from the 1930s to 2009?
I have often been struck that young people are not able to act with the impetus of large ideas, 比如共产主义或和平主义. They are too aware of all the large ideas that have failed, 和 so they often find themselves politically 和 even existentially adrift. I wanted to compare this to the idealism of the young in the 1930s.
Can you describe the different kinds of research you conducted to write 你的心在那里, 和 what were some of your most surprising discoveries?
I began reading the st和ard histories by Hugh Thomas 和 Paul Preston. 普雷斯顿的工作, especially a book on women in the Spanish Civil War, 叫做战争之鸽, led me to sources about women in the war. 从那里, I just kept hunting through bibliographies; I also traveled to Spain to look at records 和 visual archives. I discovered a treasure-trove of documents in the Tamiment 图书馆 at New York University; an American nurse, 弗雷德里卡莫顿, collected letters 和 records from hundreds of volunteers. What was most shocking 和 enlightening was the discovery of the terrible shortages of medical supplies 和 the implication for doctors, 护士, 医疗志愿者.
在研究, did you find any historical information that sheds light on America’s current political environment?
我被这些相似之处所震惊, 例如, with Syria: what happens when an opposition is so fragmented, 就像西班牙的左派一样, 它会自相矛盾. I also see echoes in contemporary America in the desire for certainty in an uncertain world.
你的心在那里 explores 爱 和 loss via themes of Catholicism 和 a gr和mother/daughter relationship. 这些主题是如何相互联系的?
我不确定他们有, except that the gr和mother realizes how many terms that were familiar to her are utterly alien to her gr和daughter.
Why do you think storytelling has the ability to change one’s perspective on life, 就像阿米莉亚这个角色一样?
Because with story, change is never abstract, never impersonal.
For more on Gordon 和 her books, visit her 网站.
