image via ocregister.com

一个17岁的名叫Cassandra Hsiao的女孩，今年难以令人置信地拿到了全部8个藤校的录取。

Cassandra现在住在南加州，收到了哈佛，普林斯顿，耶鲁，达特茅斯，布朗，哥伦比亚，康奈尔和宾夕法尼亚大学的全部藤校录取，现在正面临着世界上最幸福的烦恼 – 要拒绝哪些世界上最棒的大学呢？

Cassandra 5岁从马来西亚移民到美国，是第一代移民。她的简历无与伦比，但她这篇关于学英语的文书获得了所有招生官的青睐。

说到她不得了的简历：她的学分绩GPA 有4.67，SAT 是1540 . 她是学校里两个学生会主席之一，校杂志的主编，而且在自己的社区里也非常活跃。

除了学习好之外，Cassandra 作为记者在红毯上采访电影明星，参加记者招待会，她还亲自采访过在美国家喻户晓的大明星Captain America himself, Chris Evans!

除了被所有藤校都录取了之外，Cassandra 同时也被斯坦福，西北大学，约翰霍普金斯，南加州大学，纽约大学，以及加州大学系里面的很多名校录取。

而下面这篇文书，是她取得如此斐然结果的最根本原因。请大家再次体会文字的魔力。

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In our house, English is not English. Not in the phonetic sense, like short a is for apple, but rather in the pronunciation – in our house, snake is snack. Words do not roll off our tongues correctly – yet I, who was pulled out of class to meet with language specialists, and my mother from Malaysia, who pronounces film as flim, understand each other perfectly.

In our house, there is no difference between cast and cash, which was why at a church retreat, people made fun of me for “cashing out demons.” I did not realize the glaring difference between the two Englishes until my teacher corrected my pronunciations of hammock, ladle, and siphon. Classmates laughed because I pronounce accept as except, success as sussess. I was in the Creative Writing conservatory, and yet words failed me when I needed them most.

Suddenly, understanding flower is flour wasn’t enough. I rejected the English that had never seemed broken before, a language that had raised me and taught me everything I knew. Everybody else’s parents spoke with accents smarting of Ph.D.s and university teaching positions. So why couldn’t mine?

My mother spread her sunbaked hands and said, “This is where I came from,” spinning a tale with the English she had taught herself.

When my mother moved from her village to a town in Malaysia, she had to learn a brand new language in middle school: English. In a time when humiliation was encouraged, my mother was defenseless against the cruel words spewing from the teacher, who criticized her paper in front of the class. When she began to cry, the class president stood up and said, “That’s enough.”

“Be like that class president,” my mother said with tears in her eyes. The class president took her under her wing and patiently mended my mother’s strands of language. “She stood up for the weak and used her words to fight back.”

We were both crying now. My mother asked me to teach her proper English so old white ladies at Target wouldn’t laugh at her pronunciation. It has not been easy. There is a measure of guilt when I sew her letters together. Long vowels, double consonants — I am still learning myself. Sometimes I let the brokenness slide to spare her pride but perhaps I have hurt her more to spare mine.

As my mother’s vocabulary began to grow, I mended my own English.Through performing poetry in front of 3000 at my school’s Season Finale event, interviewing people from all walks of life, and writing stories for the stage, I stand against ignorance and become a voice for the homeless, the refugees, the ignored. With my words I fight against jeers pelted at an old Asian street performer on a New York subway. My mother’s eyes are reflected in underprivileged ESL children who have so many stories to tell but do not know how. I fill them with words as they take needle and thread to make a tapestry.

In our house, there is beauty in the way we speak to each other. In our house, language is not broken but rather bursting with emotion. We have built a house out of words. There are friendly snakes in the cupboard and snacks in the tank. It is a crooked house. It is a little messy. But this is where we have made our home.

Essay taken from tab.com。文章编辑翻译自afterschool.my

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