Walter Mosley
Walter Mosley
Walter Ellis Mosleyis an American novelist, most widely recognized for his crime fiction. He has written a series of best-selling historical mysteries featuring the hard-boiled detective Easy Rawlins, a black private investigator and World War II veteran living in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles; they are perhaps his most popular works...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth12 January 1952
CityLos Angeles, CA
CountryUnited States of America
My father's life was so decimated by his earliest experiences. His mother died when he was 7 years old, which he always said was the worst experience in his life. When he was 8, his father disappeared and he was on his own from the age of 8.
My father always taught by telling stories about his experiences. His lessons were about morality and art and what insects and birds and human beings had in common. He told me what it meant to be a man and to be a Black man. He taught me about love and responsibility, about beauty, and how to make gumbo.
I would have been completely brainwashed by this lopsided and racist view of the world if it weren't for my father. He was a deep thinker and an irrepressible problem solver. He was a Black Socrates, asking why and then spoiling ready-made replies.
My father cared about the world he lived in, and so he admitted his confusion about his place in America because he didn't want me to make the same mistake in my life.
A man's bookcase will tell you everything you'll ever need to know about him," my father had told me more than once. "A businessman has business books and a dream has novels and books of poetry. Most women like reading about love, and a true revolutionary will have books about the minutiae of overthrowing the oppressor. A person with no books is inconsequential in a modern setting, but a peasant that reads is a prince in waiting.
I think that people don't know how to do anything anymore. My father was a janitor. He could take a car apart and put it back together. He could build a house in the back yard. Today, if you ask people what they know, they say, 'I know how to hire someone.'
I'm talking about black male heroes, ... I'm not the only one doing this but there's not a big genre of black male heroes, who aren't caricatures.
The reason I'm a writer is because I'm a writer. The reason I'm going through all these different genres is I'm trying to lay out a landscape for black male heroes.
What I want to do is give people who've been there a chance to recreate that world and those who've haven't been there a chance to create it, ... For a lot of people, it's an alien land, the world of black Los Angeles.
You're talking about poor people whose lives have been destroyed. I'm upset about Katrina. I'm upset that our country follows a conservative economic program that allows poor people to lose their safety net.
You're talking about poor people whose lives have been destroyed,
you're kinda like the shifting sand in a way.
Octavia Butler has been a beacon for thousands of us. This award will continue her legacy making sure that others will find their way to harbor.
There was a whole black experience from the hippie movement. It's a whole new world.