(单词翻译:单击)
People try to place you in a box when you're a black writer as if other audiences can't enjoy your material.
如果你是一名黑人作家，大家就想给你固定一个标签，好像你的作品不会受观众喜欢一样。
It's like we just put our head down and written 44 books over the span of 11 years.
我们差不多是一直在埋头写作，然后用11年的时间写出了44本书。
We looked up and we're the youngest African-American novelists, as a couple, to make the New York Times.
一抬头才发现，我们原来是登上《纽约时报》的最年轻非裔美国作家夫妇。
It changed our life.
写作改变了我们的命运。
We're from Flint, in particular I'm from the 5th Ward of Flint.
我们来自弗林特，我来自弗林特的第五行政区。
It's one of the roughest neighborhoods. It's dog eat dog.
那是一个治安相当糟糕的地方。狗与狗都会互相残杀。
But I love it because it taught me how to come from the bottom.
但我爱那个地方，因为它教会了我如何从社会底层崛起。
Our city is dark but once you figure out how to utilize that darkness, that's when you become great.
我们的城市很黑暗，但一旦你能够利用这种黑暗，你离成功就不远了。
We're writing about the things that America covers up.
我们写作的内容恰好是我们国家试图掩盖的东西。
The neighborhoods that you don't see and that you never hear about.
我们写的是那些你从未见过，甚至连听都没听说过的地方。
Our books are us. It's black America in a nutshell.
我们写的正是我们的生活，是所有美国黑人生活的缩影。
Well when we met each other our mutual passion was writing.
我们刚认识的时候，我们发现对方也喜欢写作。
I was 15 years old. Fell in love and, you know, she ended up becoming my wife.
那时我才15岁。然后我们就坠入爱河了，最后她就成了我老婆了。
We just wrote. We barely slept, we barely ate, we definitely didn't leave the house. There was no formula for it.
我们就一直写一直写。觉也不怎么睡，饭也不怎么吃，出门更是不会了。写作没有什么规律可循。
Now we use systems.
现在我们已经有方法了。
We have a system where we write every single thought on Post-its and we stick them anywhere around the house.
我们会把每一个想法都用便利贴写下来，我们的房间里到处都贴满了便利贴。
We feel like our words are worth dollars.
我们觉得我们的字是很值钱的。
So anytime you forget something it's like flushing money down the toilet, so we don't ever want to ever let a thought pass us by.
所以只要你漏了什么灵感，感觉就像把钱扔到水里一样，所以我们任何一个想法都不会放过。
I love when I walk into a bookstore, and I see The Cartel sitting next to a James Patterson book because that's where it belongs.
我喜欢当我走进书店，看到我们写的《卡特尔》被放在 詹姆斯·帕特森（惊悚推理小说天王）的作品旁边，因为我们的书本来就属于那个位置。
I remember in the beginning I would go in a bookstore and move the books to the front.
我还记得一开始的时候，我会到书店里把我们的书放到前面。
It's important to erase that street fiction moniker.
抹掉“都市小说”这一标签是很重要的。
When you label something street fiction you immediately put it in a small section in the bookstore,
当你把一本小说划入“都市小说”的范畴时，你就将这本书限定在了书店一个非常狭小的区域内，
and only certain people will go to that section.
只有个别人才会去那个区域。
We're very fortunate to have broken out of that box,
幸运的是，我们打破了这一限制，
and we hope that now we've opened the door that now other black writers can come through that door behind us.
既然我们已经打开了一扇新的大门，我们希望，其他黑人作家也能够跨越这道门槛。
We don't wanna be great for this lifetime, we wanna be great for five generations down.
我们并不想在今生今世成名，我们想过一百多年再成名。
Back then we was chasing checks, now we're chasing history.
曾经我们追逐的是金钱，现在，我们追逐的是历史。
