John Amaechi: preference

Transcript context

…That’s the one you discuss in your memoir. That is so long ago. As I mentioned to your colleague before, I have forgotten half of the book that I’ve written now, nevermind the one I wrote in 2007. But there was a description of the Hunchback in that book that when I was a child was a description that I thought was me. I still have this experience today, and it’s part of the reason I don’t leave my house very much unless I have to for work, and it’s that wherever I go, the first look I get from people is usually one of terror and of fear because I’m 6’ 9”, 150 kilo — that’s very large in American pounds — Black person. So essentially our society’s version of a super predator. And everywhere I looked, people thought I was stupid. They thought I was dangerous, and they thought I was emotionally illiterate, too. And that was the description that was given in passing of the hunchback. So yeah, that was my introduction to seeing myself reflected in literature. But you read that and then what happened? You think like, “Oh, it’s okay to be this way,” or you think, “My goodness, they all consider me a hunchback. This is terrible”?…

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