The Free-Lance Pallbearers

Although far from being my favorite of Ishmael Reed's novels, The Free-Lance Pallbearers packs quite a punch. A satirical work on the US and race relations, it's most similar to The Terrible Twos rather than some of his novels that are closer chronologically to this work, though hoodoo's prominence ties it with Reed's neo-Hoodoo aesthetic of his early novels. Considering its publication in the 1960s, the novel is a play on race and the protagonist, Bukka Doopeyduk, transitions from believing in the despotic dictatorship of HARRY Sam to playing a pivotal role in overthrowing it. While reading this, the novel that came to mind was Harry Sonny Ladoo's Yesterdays, which shares an obsession with excrement as symbolic of the society. Anyway, this is not Reed's funniest piece of satire, but important for understanding his development as a novelist willing to take risks. 

Rose Gold

Walter Mosley's Rose Gold received an astonishingly accurate review in the Los Angeles Times. It's satisfactory, draws the reader into LA's various social classes and geography, and is always entertaining and keeps one on one's toes. That said, the novel was uneven and not as well-written or interesting as the earlier Easy Rawlins novels. Despite naming the novel after the missing Patty Hearst-like character behind Easy's case, Rosemary remains largely unknown and we barely hear her in her own voice. The same could be said about the radical group that "abducted" Rosemary, who are not anywhere near interesting like previous cases Rawlins took involving radicals (A Red Death). In addition, this novel could have cut maybe 20 or 30 pages by removing some probably superfluous sub-plots or minor cases Easy takes on the side. If it is unclear what I am alluding to, I am referring specifically to the Percy Bidwell problem and the issue regarding a white mother and her black baby, but at least the latter was relevant to the central case in a small way. Nevertheless, Mosley is a master of the trade and never fails to write addictive entertainment and interesting social commentary.

The Sun, the Sea, a Touch of the Wind

"And so, like Christ's, Haiti's glory became her cross to bear, exemplified by Charlemagne being nailed to his cross by the American marines who occupied the island from 1915 to 1934."

Trinidadian-American writer Rosa Guy has written a challenging but worthwhile novel about Haiti. The Sun, the Sea, a Touch of the Wind is centered around a Hotel Oloffson-like establishment, Old Hotel, in Port-au-Prince during the 1970s. Nixon's Watergate Scandal has just started, Jonnie Dash, a middle-aged African-American artist is back in Haiti in search of lost dreams, and themes at the intersection of class, race, gender, and imperialism suffuse the text. 

While the text differs significantly from Graham Greene's illustrious novel, which targets Duvalier with relentless criticism, both novels share a similar setting, a diverse group of foreigners and locals frequenting a fictionalized Hotel Oloffson, and a keen understanding of social systems, or roles. Guy's novel surpasses Greene's for its much stronger anti-imperialist message, of course also including women characters who are compelling. 

The protagonist, Jonnie, eventually ends up subverting the US counselor, standing up against her own fears and US imperialism on the island while also removing the layers of nationality, class, gender, and race in her interactions with the diverse cast of characters at the Old Hotel. Unfortunately, Guy's narrative can be hard to follow at times, perhaps because she often uses Jonnie Dash's memory lapses as critical moments to advance the plot. This confused me a few times, and the novel eventually loses steam, meaning that at 305 pages, one was almost ready to give up halfway through. 

For those determined readers, the pay off is worth it. Guy's protagonist lives and breathes through Port-au-Prince and its environs, offering numerous moments of shame, disgust, horror, and crushing poverty on one hand, with the natural beauty, glorious symbolism of the Haitian Revolution, and search for meaning in life on the other. While the constant use of French in dialogue came off as a little silly (I am not sure if Guy is fluent in French, but it seems like she only knows a few phrases), and Guy's inclusion of a 'voodoo' ceremony struck me as too fake or fabricated, the novel is one of the few written from a Black feminist perspective on Haiti. Next on my reading list will be Guy's retelling of the Little Mermaid story that uses Haitian Vodou and Caribbean flavors.

Drums at Dusk

Arna Bontemps and Langston Hughes

Arna Bontemps, a respected African-American poet, librarian, and collaborator of Langston Hughes, wrote a fascinating novel of the Haitian Revolution. Unlike the works of other black writers on Haiti, the Bontemps centers his narrative on French whites, Creoles and European, living in Saint Domingue during August 1791. Toussaint is the most prominent black character in the novel, and he is certainly depicted as a natural leader and heroic figure, but is mostly in the background. 

The plot concerns the outset of the August slave revolt in the north of Saint Domingue, occurring during a fête hosted at the Bréda plantation for the planter elite and some other whites. While sitting on a literal power keg because of the French Revolution and unrest among the free people of color, the whites party, feast, and enjoy a cockfight despite ominous signs of a coming slave revolt (these ominous signs include a mass suicide of newly arrived slaves the day of the party, as well as an increase in the frequency of nocturnal 'voodoo' drumming and slave meetings. As the beginning of the slave revolt unravels, the whites are forced to flee, choose sides, and prepare for an uncertain future many only begin to understand as a serious dilemma by the novel's conclusion. Elements of romance, intrigue, and competition between races and classes add nuance to the tale for an uncertain conclusion for the white protagonists of the novel. 

Diron Desautels, who one might consider the 'protagonist' of the novel, is a local white of aristocratic origins. Diron is a sympathizer of the French abolitionist society, Les Amis des Noirs, and supports the slave revolutionaries (even attending one of their evening gatherings, where he meets face to face with Boukman and Baissou, who was really Biassou if we want to be historically accurate). Nonetheless, his principles as a Jacobin and abolitionist are complicated by his race and class privilege, as well as his budding love for Céleste, a young Creole white woman from the lower classes, whose safety is compromised during the initial slave uprising. The novel switches back and forth as the third person narration explores how the various characters represent differing moral and political factions, as well as how their reactions to the beginning of the Haitian Revolution shape each other. 

As a reader, I must admit I was a little confused. Bontemps has a gift in metaphorical and descriptive prose, but some aspects of the plot are never fully explored. For instance, it is never explained how Diron successfully kidnaps and takes Paulette (a white Creole whose romances and political alliances with powerful men are opposed to Jacobinism and emancipation) from her own quarters without any resistance. In addition, it is left unclear who kills her (Arsenne?), as well as who was Paulette working with against Diron. Furthermore, the novel could have been superior by including more voices of enslaved people, allowing us to truly understand the motives, interests, and agency of the rebel slaves directly. One could easily question the noble portrait the narrator depicts of M. de Libertas, the overseer at the Bréda, who, along with his wife, are praised as 'humane' overseers who also question the ethical basis of slavery. This is perhaps an attempt to add nuance to the degrees to which various whites, including those profitting directly from slavery, can still abhor the institution, matching the contradictory ways many historical actors responded to the Haitian Revolution. Yet, personally, I found it to be taken as a given, much like the assumed leadership role Toussaint Louverture is predicted to occupy. 

These aforementioned inconsistencies or problems aside, Bontemps novel is certainly radical for its praise or moral defense of the Haitian Revolution. All the excess and violence of colonial society is on full display, and as the narrator explains, all of the horrific violence committed by the slaves is in response to the violence and degradation of slavery, although one could do without the constant label of savage being applied to the actions of the slaves. Indeed, the narrator even calls Boukman and Baissou "stupid" and lacking true leadership to carry forth the revolution beyond the giddy early days. Despite the less than flattering language used here, Bontemps's sympathies are unquestionably favorable to the slave insurgents and Diron Desautels, whose own role shifts. Instead of being led by white saviors or sparked by Les Amis des Noirs, the revolution is certainly an example of black agency, and not uniquely violent or savage considering the excessive brutality and cruelty of colonial society against slaves and free people of color. 

As the exceedingly useful introduction by Michael P. Bibler and Jessica Adams elucidates, the novel was written in the 1930s, during a context of Jim Crow, the recent end of US Occupation of Haiti (but the US retained control of Haitian customs well into the 1940s), the rise  of fascism in Europe, and exchanges between progressives and black writers across the globe. Reflecting the above, Drums at Dusk proposes a positive story in the Haitian Revolution that upholds the righteousness of resistance to unjust authority, examining the various ideological underpinnings of the era (Enlightenment, African, ancien régime). Unfortunately, as the rebellious slaves and people of color are mainly in the background, their experiences are not foregrounded and we lack anything beyond the superficial analysis of 'voodoo,' with the Bois Caïman ceremony entirely erased. Slavery and mixed-race people certainly appear, such as the modiste mulatto and her numerous sisters, who represent an alternative to the stereotypes of mixed-race women as prostitutes or mistresses of whites, and the noble Toussaint or Mars likewise illustrate older, mature slaves poised to lead the black masses into a disciplined force. 

Reading the novel's conclusion, one wonders if Bontemps ever contemplated writing a sequel. The prophetic narrator alludes to Toussaint and the future course of the Haitian Revolution, including cross-racial alliances, with tne narrative conduvice to a sequel on a perhaps interracial pro-emancipation army in Port-au-Prince (with Diron) and Toussaint in the North. Moreover, several characters, when finally realizing the full extent of the troubles facing Saint Domingue, decide to leave the island, many head to New Orleans, which could also be significant to Bontemps because of his possible origins in Saint Domingue. The potential for a sequel is overwhelming but, lamentably, Bontemps never completed one.

Favorite Quotes

"Sometimes fearful and repellent, sometimes enticing, the Haitian thicket was never dull." (33)

"Every class translated the fall of the Bastille into an opportunity for itself."

"Yes, admittedly, one could steal the black man from the jungle, but one couldn't steal the jungle from the black man." (37)

"The trouble with the ruling class, the Creoles born in the island, was that they simply didn't care what happened to Saint Domingue so long as they made enough money to return to Paris in splendor and live out their days in that city." (46)

"Mars always thought of the coachman somewhat as he might think of a man with eyes living in a country of blind beings." (77)

"Slavery had not failed to leave its mark; the slaves had come to distrust all whites." (163)

"The slaves were beyond mercy or compassion. A leaping, screaming circle of them, intoxicated with their desperately won freedom, driven wild by the imaginings of their own hearts and the examples of cruelty they had learned from their masters, made a frightful circle in the carriage road." (205)

McKay's Home To Harlem and Haiti

Claude McKay c. 1928

I would be lying if I denied that the only reason I read Claude McKay's Home To Harlem is the Haitian character, Raymond. Set in Harlem after WWI, the 1928 novel explores Harlem and black life in the aftermath of the war, focusing on the seedy underworld of urban black life. McKay's short novel includes a Haitian character from an upper-class background as an important foil for the protagonist, Jake, mainly in the second part of the three-part text. Raymond, who has to work on the railroad as a waiter, is only in the US because he was a student at Howard University, but his father was jailed for opposing the US Occupation and his brother was killed for the same reason. Therefore, Ray has to work to save up money for his education as his family lost their income in Haiti. 

When Jake meets Ray, he is exposed to a much larger black world and history, learning for the first time about the Haitian Revolution as a noble event in the course of human history, as well as the importance of sovereign black states, such as Abyssinia and Liberia. This introduction to pan-Africanist discourse via Ray piques Jake's interest, who now wishes he was educated and well-read like his Haitian friend. The reason I see them as counterparts is in how they unite the two strands of black masculinity: refined, educated, and international through Ray and domestic, hardworking, uneducated and 'primitive' Jake. McKay's use of primitivism in this text (which is used most often when describing jazz and blues in the clubs and cabarets of Harlem) should not necessarily be seen in a negative light, for in the text the 'primitive' blues, jazz, dance, drugs, and unmasked passion of black Harlem (and Pittsburgh and Philadelphia) is seen as authentic, real, and connecting individuals instead of the cold, distant 'civilization' of whites. Indeed, some of the descriptions used by McKay for the dancing in cabarets and buffet flats sound like Vodou or African ceremonies and rituals, evidence of African retentions and 'spirit' in the African Diaspora.

Perhaps like other intellectuals, McKay's use of the 'primitive' is part of the general response to the destruction of the First World War, when some thinkers began to question European civilization's level of sophistication and looked to the East or South for alternatives to the West. This, I believe, is where Haiti comes in as a symbol for black liberation and an alternative path, albeit one that is not fully explored in the novel. Ray himself, an educated man, also begins to question his Western education, since it makes him a misfit, as well as question why race is thrust upon him and his own self-distancing from African-Americans, who he admits to looking condescendingly upon for being under the white Anglo-Saxon American's yoke. Yet, Haiti at the same time is under US white rule, and Ray's identity crisis leads to some black solidarity across national or cultural barriers. 

To be honest, I was quite disappointed in McKay's Ray, who, as a complex, nuanced being, captures the multiplicity of forms blackness encompasses, but does not outright or directly work against US Occupation. Furthermore, Jake, who begins to see Ray as his best friend during their time together working on the dining car of the trains, never opposes the US Occupation, so politically speaking, the novel lacks the overt tone of black militancy of McKay's famous poem, which, like this novel does on a subtle level, capture the attitude of the New Negro after World War I, a conflict in which blacks from the US were doubly oppressed. In McKay's defense, the novel is centered on Jake and the Harlem world, so one can understand why Ray's crisis, which is certainly aligned with the themes of the novel, is relegated to the background and ultimately resolved by Ray choosing to work on a freighter, escaping the Harlem, Haiti, and living on the seas in search of freedom while still yearning to write. Ray learns to overcome his classism and moral judgment of others, however, as demonstrated by his admiration for the pimp, Jerco. 

Jake, on the other hand, finds the love of his lie and simple, domestic companionship he desires, and decides to leave 'home' away from Harlem, en route to Chicago. Jake, who experienced the docks of Europe, and the white man's savagery committed against blacks and whites in London's East End bars and brothels, knows fully well that violence transcends racial boundaries, and finds himself still searching for 'home' in Harlem only to realize that his 'home' is elsewhere, somewhere he can find the peace Ray desires in his own way, perhaps the very same alternative to Western civilization. Haiti's role as a symbol and object of pan-Africanist concern is clearly important in this context, and plays an important role in how McKay constructs a plausible black world where color, class, nationality, and gender divide Harlem's Black Belt. Like his other work, the militancy also encompasses labor, hinting at McKay's leftist interests at the time,  as well as black progress.

Favorite Quotes

"He preferred white folks' hatred to their friendly contempt." (141)

"But the Congo remained in spite of formidable opposition and foreign exploitation. The Congo was a real throbbing little Africa in New York." (151)

"Jake felt like one passing through a dream, vivid in rich, varied colors. It was revelation beautiful in his mind. That brief account of an island of savage black people, who fought for collective liberty and were struggling to create a culture of their own. A romance of his race, just down there by Panama. How strange!" (201)

"Ray felt that as he was conscious of being black and impotent, so, correspondingly, each marine down in Hayti must be conscious of being white and powerful." (210)

"He remembered when little Hayti was floundering uncontrolled, how proud he was to be the son of a free nation. He used to feel condescendingly sorry for those poor African natives; superior to ten millions of suppressed Yankee "coons." Now he was just one of them and he hated them for being one of them..." (210)

"African hate is deep down and hard to stir up, but there is no hate more realistic when it is stirred up." (221)

Jean Toomer's Cane

Jean Toomer's Cane is a powerful collection of poems and vignettes of African-American life in the rural South and urban north. Toomer's ability to write short stories of such incredible depth is quite impressive, and are actually believable stories of black life. Although Toomer personally had a complex relationship with his 'blackness,' he inserts autobiographical details in the text that highlight themes of gender (and some contain feminist themes), interracial romance, class,c olorism within black communities and black vernacular English. In addition, Toomer's metaphorical poems and rich, creative language is a pleasure to read. 

While one may read some of his work as a celebration of a loss of culture during the Great Migration, the themes of the short story, "Kabnis," seems to suggest northern blacks who return South will not be fully accepted, in either black or white society. The stories set in DC and Chicago also explore similar themes, such as the brown-skinned black man at the University of Chicago (partly based on Toomer) who cannot find acceptance among whites. One of the more powerful pieces in the text is 'Becky," the tale of a white woman who raises two black sons in a Southern town, despised by blacks and whites yet secretly helped by members of both races. Similarly', "Blood-Burning Moon" is another triumph as it tells the tale of a conflict between a white and black man over a black woman's heart, concluding in the lynching of the black man. 

Favorite Quotes

"This interest of the male, who wishes to ripen a growing thing too soon, could mean no good to her."

"The Bible flaps its leaves with an aimless rustle on her mound."

"God has left the Moses-people for the nigger."

Houses are shy girls whose eyes shine reticently upon the dusk body of the street."

"Suddenly he knew that people saw, not attractiveness in his dark skin, but difference."

"Hell of a note, cant even smoke. The stillness of it. Where they burn and hang men, you cant smoke."

"Roosters crowed, heralding the bloodshot eyes of southern awakening."

Emperor of Haiti

Martel: Where is their power now to make the gods smile upon this troubled island?

Langston Hughes's Emperor of Haiti, included in Black Heroes: 7 Plays, edited by Errol Hill, is an interesting read. It seems to follow much of Hughes's thought about Haitian social relations, particularly the color question. The mulattoes in the play are all conniving, color-struck, look to France for civilization, and ultimately plot the coup that leads to the assassination of the Black Emperor. In addition, Toussaint Louverture and the other leaders of the Haitian Revolution are omitted from the text, with the only significant mention of Toussaint appearing in the second act, when Popo and Martel wish for his leadership again (thereby making Toussaint into a noble hero, kidnapped and brought to France). 

Dessalines, on the other hand, is a tragic hero cursed by his hubris and warrior mentality. Unfit to rule, blinded by European standards of civilization, Dessalines, not unlike the mulattoes (Claire, his consort, Vuval, his aide, and Stenio), turns his back on 'voodoo' and the drums (which are shown in Act One as highly important for the slave revolution) and places himself above the peasantry. Nonetheless, Dessalines is portrayed here as not hating mulattoes at all, unlike some of Walcott's plays which suggest otherwise. Thus, there is a more nuanced aspect of this play, despite Hughes engaging in satirical and critical description (via the narrator) of the grotesque, lavish banquet in the palace, etc. Moreover, the inclusion of the market women and fisherman, as well as the 'ragamuffins' in the third act, provide a voice to the lower classes, absent in the play since the first act, which reaffirms the life of the Haitian majority, depicted as hard-working, engaged, religious, and free. Inherent to this is the respect for 'voodoo' and its persistent drums (which echo in the hills multiple times in the play), which begin the slave revolt in 1791 and reminds us of the peasantry after Dessalines assumes power. 

Thus, the play is consistent with the themes of Popo and Fifina, as well as other writings by the author pertaining to Haiti. Like Walcott's Haitian Trilogy, there is a sense of tragedy embedded in the tale of Haiti's early leaders, with an established pattern of political conflict among the elites for power. Indeed, the true heroine of the novel would be Azelia, the wife of Dessalines under slavery, who becomes the historical Marie Sainte Dédée Bazile by protecting the corpse of Dessalines and affirming the path of love and solidarity, something lost by Dessalines during his ambitious rise. The mulatto schemer, Stenio, seems like an obvious attack on President Vincent of Haiti during the time, and the sympathy the play exudes in describing the 'everyday people' of Haiti is breathtaking. Certainly for a play originally written in the 1930s, (and subsequently revised numerous times by Hughes, including as an opera with African-American composer William Grant Still) in the wake of US Occupation of Haiti, that did not demonize Vodou or the Haitian peasantry, is revolutionary.

Favorite Quotes

Dessalines: Everyone wants to dress like me―and I'm the emperor.

Dessalines: I'm the glory of Haiti!

Melon Vendor: Looks like we'll never be done fighting here in Haiti.

Tired and Merry Christmas

I am currently reading The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad and David Roessel. Of the multiple poems in this collection that spoke to me, these two below were the most meaningful. The anger of Hughes in the 1930s and his internationalist outlook are especially interesting considering how we tend to limit writers along national lines.

Tired

I am so tired of waiting,

Aren't you,

For the world to become good

And beautiful and kind?

Let us take a knife

And cut the world in two

And see what worms are eating

At the rind.

Merry Christmas 

Merry Christmas, China,

From the gun-boats in the river,

Ten-inch shells for Christmas gifts,

And peace on earth forever.

Merry Christmas, India,

To Gandhi in his cell,

From righteous Christian England,

Ring out, bright Christmas bell!

Ring Merry Christmas, Africa,

From Cairo to the Cape!

Ring Hallehuiah! Praise the Lord!

(For murder and for rape.)

Ring Merry Christmas, Haiti!

(And drown the voodoo drums--

We'll rob you to the Christian hymns

Until the next Christ comes.)

Ring Merry Christmas, Cuba!

(While Yankee domination 

Keeps a nice fat president

In a little half-starved nation.)

And to you down-and-outers,

("Due to economic laws")

Oh, eat, drink, and be merry

With a bread-line Santa Claus--

While all the world hails Christmas,

While all the church bells sway!

While, better still, the Christian guns

Proclaim this joyous day!

While holy steel that makes us strong

Spits forth a mighty Yuletide song:

SHOOT Merry Christmas everywhere!

Let Merry Christmas GAS the air!

A Poem For Jacques Roumain

Enjoy a short tribute to Jacques Roumain, written by his African-American friend and literary giant, Langston Hughes. I believe this poem and numerous other fascinating aspects of Jacques Roumain's life and work can be found in Fowler's A Knot in the Thread: The Life and Work of Jacques Roumain.

Always 

You will be 

Man

Finding out about

The ever bigger world

Always you will be

Hand that links

Erzulie to the Pope,

Damballa to Lenin

Haiti to the universe

Popo and Fifina

Popo and Fifina is an endearing story of a lower-class Haitian family moving from the countryside to the city of Cap-Haitien. The titular characters, Popo and Fifina, are two siblings who experience the move in lyrical prose and unadorned respect for the lifestyle of those Haitians without shoes. Partly inspired by the three month stay of Langston Hughes in Cap-Haitien, this is a very realistic account of a family in the city sometime during the US Occupation (1915-1934). The woodworking, colors and games of the city, the lives of fisherman, and last, but certainly not least, allusions to Haitian popular culture are rooted in reality. There's even a scene featuring music and laughter in the countryside (amba tonnel) where the extended family of Mamma Anna lives. 

Since the short novel is directed toward children, there is little overt references to politics or opposition to the US Marines. However, one amusing instance in the tale features a kite symbolizing the USSR defeating a kite with a hawk (presumably representing the US), which clearly reflects the leftist sympathies of Hughes rather than Bontemps. Bontemps, like Hughes, also praised the cultural practices and lives of the black masses, a shared interest that permeates this book. Moreover, the text subtly alludes to Haitian popular culture and religion in a way that validates the lives of these hard-working peasants and urban working-class Haitians.

This no doubt reflects the observations of Hughes during his time in Haiti, one where Hughes saw the racist boot of US Occupation stomping on Haitian sovereignty, but also the classist world wrought by the "mulatto" elite against the interests of the black-skinned majority of Haitians. In my opinion, Hughes exaggerated the importance of color in explaining class difference, yet Popo and Fifina largely ignores class (except for occasional references to the homes of the well-to-do, who can afford lavish designs on furniture, running water, and shoes) or allusions to the US Marines except for the private beach they use. 

Walter Mosley's A Red Death

"One day they gonna th'ow that list out, man. They gonna need some movie star or some new bomb an' they gonna th'ow that list away. Mosta these guys gonna have work again," he said, then he winked at me. "But you still gonna be a black niggah, Easy. An' niggah ain't got no union he could count on, an' niggah ain't got no politician gonna work fo' him. All he got is a do'step t'shit in and a black hand t'wipe his black ass."


Walter Mosley's Red Death, the second installment in the Easy Rawlins mystery series, is a fun read. Unlike Devil in a Blue Dress, which was a tragic mulatto story written in the frame of a detective novel, Red Death is about the McCarthy era's Red Scare. The "sly Jew" communist, Chaim Wenzler, is suspected by the FBI to possess important documents that he may share with the Russians, and agent Craxton needs a Negro to infiltrate Wenzler's charities with First African Baptist Church in Watts. Throughout the novel, the reader is taken on a journey around 1950s Los Angeles, with an emphasis on the black community of which Ezekiel Rawlins was always part of for his detective work. Interestingly, in the context of anti-communist hysteria sweeping the nation, and the blacklisting of suspected communists and left-wing sympathizers, Mosley leaves out the story of blacklisted black actors and celebrities such as Harry Belafonte, Hazel Scott (Trinidadian sista who married Adam Clayton Powell!), or Ossie Davis. 


Nevertheless, the novel is interesting for reflecting Mosley's own life. Easy Rawlins, the black, self-raised Texas Negro, is set up to get a steady job working for the Los Angeles public school system, which both of Mosley's parents did. Moreover, the Jewish communist, Wenzler, and him and his daughter's close relationship with Rawlins was likely inspired by Mosley's mother, a New York Jew with leftist affiliations. Indeed, part of the close friendship that develops between Chaim Wenzler and Easy Rawlins lies in their solidarity against racism, and their experiences in World War II Europe liberating death camps and all that good stuff. At the end of the day, Rawlins, out of a fear of the IRS imprisoning him for tax evasion, essentially sells himself as a spy for the FBI, losing nearly everything he gained at the end.


Ima read the next Easy Rawlins mystery and write a more detailed review that doesn't reveal too much of the plot. I patiently await the next opportunity to avoid doing schoolwork in order to complete another Mosley novel. I also appreciated the Africa Migration group, an obvious reference to Marcus Garvey, Pan-Africanism, and black nationalism.