Race As A Subject Only Comes About

I Loved Charlotte Bronte When I Was Little, And I Wanted To Be Charlotte Bronte The Way People Want To Be A Princess.

I Was Given A Dictionary When I Was Seven, And I Read It Because I Had Nothing Else To Read. I Read It The Way You Read A Book.

I Would Be Lost Without The Feeling Of Antagonism That People Have Towards Me. I Write Out Of Defiance.

The People Who Invented Race, Who Grouped Us Together As "black," Were Inventing And Categorizing Their Ability To Do Something Vicious And Wrong.

Out Of The Corner Of One Eye, I Could See My Mother. Out Of The Corner Of The Other Eye, I Could See Her Shadow On The Wall, Cast There By The Lamplight. It Was A Big And Solid Shadow, And It Looked So Much Like My Mother That I Became Frightened. For I Could Not Be Sure Whether For The Rest Of My Life I Would Be Able To Tell When It Was Really My Mother And When It Was Really Her Shadow Standing Between Me And The Rest Of The World.