WHEN THE READING LIGHT WENT ON

My parents were hyper-intellectual ‘60s refugees. When I was a kid, my father--as an act of protest--threw the television out the window of our third-floor San Francisco Victorian. He literally killed the TV.

I didn’t have a television until I was a teenager, so I was an obsessive reader. That was my only form of entertainment. I was literally a huge dork. I read on the bus so much that I would miss my stop.

My dad had a motorcycle, and I used to ride on the back and read. I would rest the book on my dad’s back. So he built a harness to attach me to him so that I wouldn’t fall off while I was reading.

I got so distracted with my books--”Little Women,” “Lord of the Rings,” “The Hobbit.” My favorite book from my childhood was called “The Man Who Folded Himself.” It was about time travel. I’ve been a huge science fiction buff. I just love all things sci-fi.

I’m really tall, and I was the only black kid at the private school I attended in Berkeley. I was 5-foot-10 at the age of 10; now, I’m 6 feet. I didn’t have a boyfriend my own height until I was a senior in high school. I was always a foot taller than all the people I went out with.

So definitely my world became books when I was a kid. And my book reading made me a social misfit, which has been the source of hours of comedy. Self-deprecation is great comedy. People love to laugh at you.

Being a reader gives you a big inner life, a big imagination. I’m definitely a big dreamer, and that’s why it’s such a natural progression for me to become a comedian. I could sit down with a stick and a leaf, and that could be a world for me.

In my opinion, the best comedy is the art of the spoken word. It’s the turning of the phrase or the twisting of ideas that surprises the audience into laughter. A well-read comedian is going to have more places to go and see more comedy in life.