During World War II, the women of the Soviet 588th Night Bomber Regiment flew missions after dark. Their Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes usually carried two women: a pilot and a navigator. Together, they had to find their target, carry out the attack, and make their way back through the night.

As they approached a target, the pilots sometimes cut their engines and let the planes glide. Soldiers on the ground could hear a faint sound in the air before the bombs fell. They called the aviators the “Night Witches.” A name meant to make these women sound frightening became the name by which many people remember them.

It is tempting to tell their story as a tale of fearless heroines. But each mission required two women to work together while facing the possibility that they might never return. Their place in history was made through repeated, dangerous acts: someone flew the plane, someone guided it, and some of them died in service. Remembering them means remembering both their skill and the cost of the war they fought.

第二次世界大战期间，苏联第588夜间轰炸航空团的女性在夜色中执行任务。她们驾驶的波利卡尔波夫 Po-2 双翼飞机通常载着两个人：一名飞行员和一名领航员。她们要一起找到目标、完成攻击，再摸索着穿过黑夜返回。

接近目标时，飞行员有时会关闭发动机，让飞机滑行。地面上的士兵先听见空中微弱的声响，接着炸弹落下。他们称这些飞行员为“夜间女巫”。这个原本让她们听起来可怕的称呼，后来成了许多人记住她们的名字。

人们很容易把这个故事讲成一群无所畏惧的女英雄的故事。但每次任务都需要两个人在可能无法返航的情况下并肩合作。她们的历史由一次次危险的行动组成：有人驾驶，有人领航，也有人在服役中丧生。记住她们的本领，也要记住她们参加的战争所付出的代价。

On November 22, 1909, garment workers and labor organizers gathered at Cooper Union in New York City. They had come to discuss the conditions faced by women working in the city’s clothing factories. Speaker after speaker addressed the crowd. Twenty-three-year-old Clara Lemlich, an immigrant garment worker who had helped organize other workers, was there to hear them.

Lemlich rose and asked to speak. She called for a general strike. The crowd supported her proposal, and soon thousands of garment workers walked out of their factories. Their action became known as the Uprising of the 20,000. Many of those who joined were young immigrant women.

It is easy to remember this as the moment one brave woman took the floor. But her words mattered because thousands of women were ready to act together. They made the clothes that filled the shops of New York. That night, they insisted on having a say in the conditions under which those clothes were made.

1909年11月22日，服装工人与劳工组织者聚集在纽约的 Cooper Union，讨论女性在服装厂里的工作条件。发言者一个接一个走上讲台。23岁的移民女工 Clara Lemlich 也在现场。她曾参与组织其他工人，此刻正听着台上的讲话。

Lemlich 起身要求发言。她提议举行总罢工。会场支持了她的提议，不久，成千上万名服装工人走出工厂。这场行动后来被称为**“两万人的起义”**。参加者中有许多年轻的移民女性。

我们很容易只记住一个勇敢的女人站起来讲话的瞬间。但她的话之所以有力量，是因为成千上万的女性准备一起行动。纽约商店里的衣服出自她们的双手。那天晚上，她们坚持自己有权决定：这些衣服应该在怎样的工作条件下被制作出来。

In 1911, Frances Perkins witnessed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City. The fire killed 146 people, most of them women. Perkins had already cared about working conditions. At the scene, she saw what unsafe conditions could mean for the people who worked inside a factory.

Protests and memorial gatherings followed the fire. Perkins continued to work for labor reform, and in 1912 she became the head of New York City’s Committee on Safety. Years later, she would become the United States Secretary of Labor. Her work after the fire was less visible than the disaster itself, but it asked a practical question: what must change so that workers can get home safely?

The women who died should be remembered as people who had gone to work that day. Remembering them also means paying attention to what happened afterward: the demands for safer workplaces, and the long work of turning those demands into protections.

1911年，Frances Perkins 在纽约亲眼目睹了 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory 大火。火灾夺走了146人的生命，死者大多是女性。Perkins 此前就关注劳动条件；在火灾现场，她看见了不安全的工作环境会给工厂里的人带来什么后果。

火灾之后，人们举行抗议和悼念活动。Perkins 继续推动劳动改革，并于1912年领导纽约市的安全委员会。多年后，她成为美国劳工部长。灾难之后的改革工作没有大火本身那么显眼，但它不断追问一个实际的问题：要改变什么，工人才能平安回家？

那些遇难女性值得被记住，因为她们原本只是像往常一样去上班。记住她们，也意味着关注火灾之后发生的事：人们对更安全工作场所的要求，以及把这些要求变成实际保护所需的漫长努力。

In 1981, Maya Lin was a 21-year-old student when she entered a competition to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Her proposal placed two black stone walls into the earth. Instead of centering a statue of a soldier, it placed the names of those who had died or remained missing where visitors could find them. The judges chose her design, although it later faced public opposition.

A visitor approaching the finished memorial can search the wall for one name among many. Its polished surface also reflects the person standing before it. The experience asks visitors to come close. A name may belong to a father, a friend, or someone the visitor never met.

Lin’s design gave the public a place to remember individual lives within the enormous loss of a war. Her story also asks who gets to shape a nation’s memory. When her proposal was selected, she was still a student; the memorial she imagined would become a place where people could return, read a name, and remember.

1981年，21岁的学生林璎（Maya Lin）参加了越战纪念碑设计竞赛。她的方案把两面黑色石墙嵌入土地。设计没有以一尊士兵雕像为中心，而是让参观者能够找到逝者与失踪者的名字。评审选中了她的作品，尽管这个设计后来也遭到了公开反对。

走近建成后的纪念碑，参观者可以在众多名字中寻找某一个人。光亮的石面还会映出站在墙前的自己。这里的纪念需要人走近：那个名字可能属于一位父亲、一位朋友，也可能属于一个参观者从未见过的人。

林璎的设计给公众留下了一个地方，让人们在战争造成的巨大损失中记住一个个具体的生命。她的故事也提出一个问题：谁有机会决定一个国家如何保存记忆？方案入选时，她还只是一名学生；她构想的纪念碑后来成为人们可以一次次返回、寻找名字、怀念故人的地方。

In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Edna Pontellier spends the summer trying to learn how to swim. Other people offer to teach her, but she has never felt able to swim out on her own. Then, one night, she discovers that she can move through the water without anyone holding her up.

Edna swims farther than she expected. For a moment, she feels the pleasure of relying on her own body and choosing her own direction. But she also becomes aware of how far she has gone. The open water frightens her, and she turns back toward shore.

That fear is part of what makes the scene powerful. Edna’s first independent swim does not make every difficulty in her life disappear. It gives her a new experience: she has gone somewhere by herself, recognized the danger, and found her own way back. Her awakening begins with an action she can feel.

在凯特·肖邦的《觉醒》中，Edna Pontellier 整个夏天都在学游泳。别人试着教她，但她一直觉得自己无法独自游出去。直到某个夜晚，她突然发现，没有人扶着，她也能在水中前进。

Edna 游得比自己预想的更远。有一瞬间，她感受到依靠自己的身体、自己决定方向的快乐。但她也意识到自己已经离岸边很远。开阔的海面让她害怕，于是她转身往回游。

正是这份恐惧，让这一幕更加有力量。第一次独自游泳没有让 Edna 生活里的所有困难消失。它给了她一种新的经历：她靠自己到达了一个地方，意识到危险，又自己找到了回去的路。她的觉醒从一个身体真正感受过的行动开始。

The narrator of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper has been told to rest in an upstairs room. She wants to write and to describe what she is experiencing, but the people around her believe they know what is best for her. As the days pass, she becomes increasingly absorbed by the room’s strange yellow wallpaper. She begins to believe that a woman is trapped behind its pattern.

Near the end of the story, the narrator tears at the wallpaper, trying to free the woman she sees there. The scene can look like an act of rebellion, but it is also deeply disturbing. Her distress has grown while her own account of what she needs has gone unheard.

The story raises a difficult question about care: what happens when the person being cared for is given no authority to explain her own experience? Gilman does not give the reader an easy victory. She shows how frightening it can be when someone loses the power to speak for herself.

在夏洛特·珀金斯·吉尔曼的《黄色墙纸》中，叙述者被要求待在楼上的房间里休养。她想写作，也想说出自己的感受，但身边的人相信他们更知道怎样做对她好。日子一天天过去，她越来越专注于房间里那张奇怪的黄色墙纸。她开始相信，花纹后面困着一个女人。

故事接近结尾时，叙述者撕扯墙纸，试图把她看见的女人放出来。这一幕像是反抗，却也令人不安。她的痛苦不断加深，而她对自己需求的解释始终没有被认真听见。

这个故事提出了一个关于照护的难题：如果被照护的人没有权利解释自己的经历，会发生什么？吉尔曼没有给读者一个轻松的胜利结局。她让我们看见，一个人失去为自己说话的能力，是多么可怕。