Walter Mosley

Stuart Sim (University of Sunderland)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.5: African American Writing and Culture of the United States.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Philathia Bolton (University of Akron), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), J. Michael Duvall (College of Charleston), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), A Yemisi Jimoh (University of Massachusetts Amherst), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Tony Papanikolas (San Jose State University)

Dates

Born 12 Jan 1952
Activity 1990-ongoing

Places

Born in United States
Active in United States

Genres and Modes

Crime and Detective

Cultural Identities

African American

Activities

Primary

Novelist

Resources

Mosley's Works

Save to Bookshelf

Walter Mosley was born in Los Angeles to an African-American father and a Jewish mother, and his mixed race identity has had a critical impact on his fiction, which has been strongly supportive of both the African-American and Jewish causes. Now resident in New York, Mosley has served on various public and professional bodies, such as the board of the National Book Awards and the Mystery Writers of America (of which he is a past-president).

Mosley’s most successful books have been those involving the character of Easy Rawlins, a sometime (and generally reluctant) private detective, living initially in the black ghetto in south Los Angeles in the 1940s. Through a series of books (11 to date), Mosley takes Rawlins, a World War II veteran deeply resentful at the racial prejudice he still

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1564 words

Citation: Sim, Stuart. "Walter Mosley". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 February 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12513, accessed 27 November 2024.]