Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man (Prologue Excerpt)

“I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie extoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids — and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination — indeed, everything and anything except me.”
–from “Prologue” Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison–

(The ‘Invisible Man’ sculpture, after Ralph Ellison’s classic novel, in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City)

Ralph Waldo Ellison (March 1, 1914[1] – April 16, 1994) was a black novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer. He was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Ellison is best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953. He also wrote Shadow and Act (1964), a collection of political, social and critical essays, and Going to the Territory (1986).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Ellison