"Why are you reading all them books? White man ain't gonna let you do anything in them books."
I heard these words from an older cousin who expressed his opinion that I wasn't normal.

I read constantly, anything I could get my hands on: comics, spy stories, boys' adventures. I even "borrowed" from my mother's bookshelf in the dead of night. And I read lots of science-fiction and fantasy. But at some point I noticed that none of the fantastic events in the stories I loved ever seemed to happen to black people. Nothing cool ever seemed to happen to us.