And I've known Sean King for a long time and I know that he's controversial and I

know that a lot of people have questions about him and his intentions and why he does the work

he does and why he seems so obsessed with showing us the videos and telling us the stories of violent things that happen to black people

throughout this country.

And I didn't really realize why he's so intent on that until I heard him talk about his sort of origin

story, the sort of moment that his childhood ended, a violent attack that set him on the

path that he has been on for the rest of his life.

What is your superpower?

What is the thing that you do

that has fueled the success that you've had?

Yeah, I don't call it a superpower in the book,

but I, in chapter two of the book,

it's really only chapter that is super autobiographical.

And I tell my story of in some ways it is an origin story of how I came to be who I am.

You know in March of 1995 I was 15 years old. I was living in rural Kentucky and I was brutally

assaulted by a racist group of students at my high school and that came after almost two years

of being harassed by these guys day in and day out and it had been a brutal my freshman and sophomore year in high school were brutal, and it basically ended in March of my sophomore year of just being assaulted so badly that I missed the next two years of high school. I had three spinal

surgeries. The recovery from all of those surgeries was horrible. I have

fractures in my face and ribs. I have PTSD, the emotional trauma of it was, it's hard for people who haven't

been through something like that to understand, like the emotional comeback was as hard as the physical comeback from him.

I was just a shattered boy.

And because of that, I lost some things. I lost whatever whatever a childhood is it ended on that day.

...