I first met Antigone when I was nine. She just hung there on the wall. Her task was to bury her dead brother: mine was to dust h

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问题     I first met Antigone when I was nine. She just hung there on the wall. Her task was to bury her dead brother: mine was to dust her off. As I polished the frame mat held her, I fell in love with a world so different from mine, one of poetic words and lofty art. While helping my mom clean professors’ homes, I became conscious of socioeconomic stratification(阶层), of looking within while being without. Like many minority women, my mom did this as a second job—a burden we both carried just so that we could get by.
    I grew up watching minority and immigrant women having to hustle to make it. I marveled at how resourceful and entrepreneurial they had to be, and I also witnessed how the economic tradeoffs they endured hampered their ability to compete for the type of jobs mat led to a career. They leaned in to work as hard as anyone. They had no alternative. But they vied for a chance to clean the boardroom, not for a seat in it.
    That sheds light on the troubling correlation between gender, race and income inequality in this country. Let’s remember that the median wealth of white households is 20 times that of African-American households and 18 times that of Hispanic households—which are overwhelmingly run by single mothers. More than just statistics, the data highlight why we need a more expansive understanding of the choices women face in America.
    I am an immigrant who came to the United States as a child when my parents fled communist Romania. My mom cleaned schools. My dad drove trucks. We spent weekends with him on the road because it was the only time the three of us could be together. Those are the types of realities that impede many women from pursuing their dreams. Telling minority women to be tough and aggressive ignores the difficulties they’ve overcome to get here. It’s preaching to the choir.
    While money isn’t always the solution, it is certainly a key part of the problem. For many women, believing they can lean in to a career, rather than multiple low-paying jobs, starts when they’re exposed to alternate realities. They need a sense of community that extends beyond others who sound or look like them, and that can help them see new opportunities. That’s why we should make sure the debate on women’s empowerment doesn’t leave out those who can’t afford the same set of choices.
    The First Lady seems to understand this. She hosts dinners occasionally at the White House for young women from underserved communities, because she knows that success and achievement in many ways require an exposure to money and power. If women learn to be comfortable in that setting, they also begin to see a new range of what is possible. That’s the type of outreach and exposure that encouraged me to even consider going to the University of Chicago and later Harvard Kennedy School, places no one in my own immigrant community considered as options.
What may be the author’s main purpose in writing this passage?

选项 A、To reveal the living reality of the minority and immigrant women in America.
B、To analyze the correlation between gender, race and income inequality in America.
C、To explain why the minority women need to expose to the new world.
D、To depict the life and learning experiences of the author as a minority woman.

答案C

解析 主旨题。作者从描述以其母亲为代表的底层女性的工作现状出发,揭示其生活的困境,并通过第一夫人在白宫宴请底层年轻女性的举动以及作者自身的求学经历来进一步论证,要改变这一现状,必须给予这一群体接触“新世界”生活方式的机会,因而主要目的是对这一观点的解释说明,故[C]符合题意。
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