AMY GOODMAN: Welcome back to our African American literature special here on Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman. African American writer Walter Mosley is quickly emerging as one of the great American novelists. Just as striking as his speedy arrival on the American literary scene is his genre: a series of mystery novels set in postwar Los Angeles featuring a reluctant Black investigator named Easy Rawlins. Mosley is author of Devil in a Blue Dress, which was made into a Hollywood film, and, most recently, of Gone Fishin’. President Clinton says that Mosley is one of his favorite authors. In fact, Mosley visited President Clinton at the White House. The guards asked for an ID when he was walking in. He didn’t have one, but he showed them his picture on the jacket of his book. Here’s Walter Mosley speaking at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, New York, this past year.

WALTER MOSLEY: It’s true that I had to leave, and I couldn’t — I couldn’t be part of the panel. And I really wanted to come, which I’ll explain in this small talk that I’m going to give. And so, you know, since they fit me in, I’m going to try not to make this very long. I was told 10 minutes. I think I can — I think I can do that. I think I can do that, you know, but there’s a few things I wanted to say first. I mean, in 10 minutes, you can say one thing, and hopefully in 10 minutes I’ll get to say one thing. Most people don’t say one thing ever. But, you know, you try [inaudible].

I want to thank — I want to thank everyone for inviting me, and I’m really, really, really happy to be here, for a lot of reasons. I mean, one is, I always love coming to Medgar Evers, because I always remember Medgar Evers, you know. And the thing about him — you know, the thing I try to write about when I write is about Black male heroes. And, you know, the thing that we — that you forget, I mean, we’re writers, and we work. You know, most of us get paid for at least something. And we do it, and we expect, you know, like some respect and a kind of fairly easy life. But you think of Medgar Evers — I always think of Medgar Evers going home at night, you know? I mean, and I think, “God, it’s like it’s an heroic effort just to like drive to your house every day. So, I’m going home. I’m going to walk to my house.” And it’s like it’s the hardest thing in the world, something I don’t think I would be able to do if I were him. And I always remember that when I come here. And I always remember that, actually, when I’m writing and working.

And, I mean, I want to talk a little bit about being here, but one thing I have to say is that I’m really happy to be here with Amiri Baraka. You know, Amiri — but I want to tell you, like, this is like — this is something else. Amiri has always frightened me to death. You know, always, my whole life. And one of the reasons is, is that, you know, because he’s so powerful, and he always tells the truth — something which most of us also can’t manage to do — every time I ever hear him talk. But even way before that, when I was a kid, I was an actor, like, and I used to act in a bookstore called the Aquarian bookstore in Los Angeles, the oldest Black-owned bookstore in America. I was 10 years old. And they had books. And I used to sit there. And Amiri Baraka taught me that I didn’t know how to read. I was thinking, like, I knew how to read, and then I started to read Dante’s System of Hell [The System of Dante’s Hell], when I was a kid. And I was saying, “I know I can understand this book. I know.” And it took me a long time, like years. But in that, you know, and being a child, I learned how to read, and I learned how to read from Amiri. So I learned how to read from one of my first Black male heroes. And I’m very pleased about that, and I’m very pleased to be here with him tonight. And we’re all, really.

Now, just to give you like the background of what I want to say, is I want to say the first time I came here was the second conference. And I hadn’t finished writing Devil in a Blue Dress yet. I didn’t have any representation. I didn’t have any hopes of representation. And I was here, and it was both an exhilarating and a daunting experience, you know, because it was very exciting. There are all kinds of writers here, you know. David Bradley was here with, you know, his big Santa Claus beard, you know, getting people mad, which is the thing that he does the best. Michelle Wallace was here.

There were three — I was standing in like an auditorium. There were these three really beautiful young Black women standing there, and I was, you know, looking at them, saying, “God, there are these beautiful young Black women.” And then, all of a sudden, one of them said, “Quincy!” You know? Quincy Troupe walked in, right? And, like, they all went around Quincy, you know? And I knew who he was, I read his work, but I had never met him. And like this aura of this incredible man.

Terry McMillan was here and was wonderful, only it was sad, because I was listening to Terry talk, and she was telling me what she did to sell her book. You know, she said, “Well, you know, you’ve got to get out on the road. You’ve got to go to those churches and those women’s groups, and you’ve got to go to those barbecues. And you’ve got to get in your car, and you’ve got to put…” I was, like, “Man, I don’t even know how to drive. This is not going to happen. I’m never going to get published.” So, after Terry was finished, it was wonderful, you know, but I just said, “Well, at least I can love writing anyway.” And then I thought, “Well, maybe I can sell a book.”

And then Faith Childs was talking, you know, about — and the first thing she said, you know, Faith Childs, she said, “Well, listen, I am completely overwhelmed. I cannot take another submission. So I’m going to talk to you about agents, but I can’t take your work.” And I said, “Oh my god. You know, I thought maybe I could meet her, but I guess that’s not going to happen, either.”

I was very — but also, I was standing outside somewhere, and a young woman walked up to me. And I don’t remember what her name was, but she said, “Excuse me, are you a writer?” And I said, “Yeah.” She said, “I am, too, you know. Have you been published yet?” And I said, “Well, no. I mean, I have stories somewhere.” She said, “Well, me, neither. But you know, we’re the future. We’re the future of writers.” And I remember thinking, “My god, this women really is going to be very successful.” And I felt very good, you know, that she included me in her aura of success.

But like I said, me being here was both like a dream and a nightmare. It really was. I mean, I was in one room where I don’t know what we were talking about, but some guy stood up, and he had a big manuscript in a leather-bound thing in his hand, and he talked about his whole experience of never getting published and never having anybody pay attention to him, and nobody cared about him. And we were all silent. We didn’t know what to say. And he said, “But I figured it out.” So there was a little bit of relief. And then he said, “I figured out I need a mentor.” And he looked around the room. He said, “I think I should have Toni Morrison as my mentor.” And he looked around, waiting for somebody to give him Toni’s number. You know, and I really felt I really identified with this guy. You know, I thought, “Yeah, if only I was so brave to ask.”

So, then the next conference came, you know, and I was here. You know, I was here because I loved it. You know, you can just kind of hang around. There are all these wonderful writers, all these people who love writing and themselves. And I had a book out. Nobody knew it very much. But I like to be in the company of writers and readers, speakers and listeners. And there was a great deal of concern at that time about African American writers, a term that I use sometimes. I like to use “Black” more, but I say “African Americans” every once in a while. There were fewer books being published, and Black men hadn’t — nobody was paying attention to them. Nobody was getting published. I said, “Well, I had one book published,” but nobody listened to me. They said, “No, Black men are not being published.” I said, “All right. It’s OK.”

And then, OK, so I was there at that conference. I had a lot fun again, which is why I really wanted to come to this again, because it’s like a regular thing for me. And now I’m here again, and I know things have changed. And this is the one thing I want to talk about, is what’s changed, you know, because very often what one person sees and what another person sees is not the same.

You know, a point at hand is Rodney King, you know? A good, decent, liberal, everyday, nice, passionate white person will watch Rodney King getting beaten, and say, “This is terrible. This is awful. This is bad. This is wrong. Those men should go to jail.” And then they think secretly to themselves, “Nobody can fault me for that. That’s the right feeling, the right response.” Of course, now a Black person sees Rodney King, and, you know, who cares? Who cares about Rodney King? But the fact is, is this has happened to everybody I’ve ever known and all of their ancestors all the way back and to me, and it’s going to happen to my children. All right? And so, there’s a different view.

And so, when we talk about things have changed, I think about it. I say, well, you know, we have Terry McMillan and Toni Morrison, Alice Walker. There is myself, E. Lynn Harris, Nathan McCall, A.J. Verdelle, Connie Briscoe, Bebe Moore Campbell. There’s a lot of us. We’ve gone out into all of the genres and really kind of taken over, because, like, for instance, Octavia Butler, who’s been given the MacArthur “Genius” Grant, and, of course, Toni Morrison taking home the Nobel. I mean, this is wonderful. And so, after looking at that and, you know, listing the long list that I haven’t said, you can say it seems as though we have arrived. And you can say it seems as though we’re going to go through another, larger Renaissance.

And my question immediately when somebody says, “Now we’re going to go through another, larger Renaissance,” is, “Well, what happened to the last one?” What happened, you know? What happened to the writers of the '30s and the ’40s, the ’60s, the ’70s? Where are their heirs? Where are their books? And where are they? Most people can't answer those questions. You can, you know, but when you do, it’s kind of sad. You know, you meet people who have written wonderful books, and they’re just kind of sitting around selling them, by hand.

Like today, it was like, “Have you ever heard of him?” “No, I never heard of him.” “Why didn’t you hear about him?” Well, the answer is, is because white people didn’t tell you about him. Because white people are the only people who can tell people about writers. That’s true in America. I don’t like it, but it’s true.

The truth is, is that the cultural backbone of America is not only the literature, but it’s also the book publishing industry. Our history, our culture, our cinema, our literacy, our morality and our truths are based on the decisions of people in that business. And the people in that business, the people who dominate that business, are almost all white men, liberal white men, and women, who dine with Nelson Mandela and go to their clubs and their cliques afterwards and talk about what Nelson said. And so they have to be good, you know?

They say, “Well, you know, you called me” — I go to them often. I say, “Well, you know, this is racist, the way that the industry is structured.” And they say, “How could it be racist? My children have, you know, lovers of color. You know? I gave up my daughter, you know, to…” And you go, “You know, this is not what it’s about.” The publishers, the editors, the designers, the sale force, the publicity, foreign rights experts, 98%-plus white, also liberal white, also unapologetic white. “A Black person with the appropriate skills could get a job anywhere,” they tell me. I ask, “Well, what about skilled white people? Can’t they get jobs anywhere?” And they don’t answer me. They smile and, “Well, you know,” because there’s a belief, another racist belief, that smart Black people have it easier than white people. It’s a funny thing. You know, it’s like an assumption. And they’ll figure, “Well, you know, a Black person, oh, he’s smart? Well, you know, there’s so few of them. But, you know, we have to spread them around.”

And what we have to do is we have to worry about our representation in mainstream American and international publishing. Without editors and publishers in positions of power, in 10 years from now we’ll be looking for a new Renaissance, because the people who forgot those people were white people in publishing. And they didn’t care, because they’re not their friends. They’re not their constituency. It’s not their language. It’s not their history. You can’t blame them, really.

I keep on thinking, you know, like I was at a party once, and a guy came up to me. He said, “My name is Joe Jones,” like I should know. You know, I hear somebody say their name, and, you know, so, “My name is Marilyn Monroe.” And I go, “Joe Jones, uh-huh.” And I go away, and I go to somebody else. I say, “Who’s that?” They say, “Well, don’t you know him? You know, in the ’70s, he published 2 million books.” And I say, “Wow! I never heard of him.” And they say, “Yeah. Isn’t that too bad?”

Well, you know, this is what happens to us, all of us, almost all of us, almost everybody, you know? I mean, you know, if you die — I mean, Zora Neale Hurston — Zora Neale Hurston had a hard time at the end of her life, you know, publishing books, writing books. People forgot Zora Neale Hurston. And then, when they talk about her, they say, “Well, you know, her last book wasn’t very good.” I say, “Well, what about all those other books?” But people don’t care.

And what I want to say is it’s not just Random House and Simon & Schuster and Bantam Doubleday Dell. You know, I mean, we could blame them, and it’s nice and everything. But it’s really — the problem is here in this room with us, at least partially. Many of us, and I have to include myself here, are making the publishing world rich, while they scorn our publishing professionals.

I was on a panel in Chicago with Max Rodriguez, who’s here, who publishes Quarterly Black Review of Books, wonderful, a wonderful publication which really cares about us. You know, I just have to take a slight — like a slight aside there, you know, because there’s a lot of publications, Black publications in America, which will talk about Black people once white people say that they’re famous, once they’re put like, you know, in big films or they sell lots and lots of books, and say, you know, [inaudible], “Listen, let’s talk to Toni Morrison, Terry McMillan. We’re going to interview them.” But if you come up to somebody who’s just written one book — it’s very good, but it’s only like 5,000 copies — “Oh, well, we’re not ready for that yet. You know, you really have to go to the white press for that.” So, this is a problem.

But I was with Max Rodriguez, and Max says, “Well, listen, a lot of you writers here, what you could do, you know, if you’re making it in the mainstream — you publish four of five good books, you’re making some money — give one of those books to a Black publisher.” He said, “Just one mainstream best-seller would mean a lot to a publisher committed to preserving our history and assuring our future.” This is what Max said. And I think that it’s true.

I think that it’s important that we work together in every way to pressure and change the hierarchy of American and international culture. We have to challenge, persuade, and overcome the walls that are built around us, but, more importantly, the walls that are built in our minds. Because, you know, like, somebody will say, “Well, listen. Why don’t you give that book to a Black publisher?” You say, “Hey, man, sh-t, that book is worth $200,000. Sh-t, I ain’t gonna trust no n—ga with that.” But, you see, as long as that’s true, as long as we approach it like that, then we’re not going to get anywhere. We’re not in a Renaissance now. I want to say that. We’re not in a Renaissance now. And we won’t be in one unless we open up ourselves and deal with other people.

And I just want to add at the end here, you know, to my fellow writers who are lucky enough to be in this position, is to say that I’m not suggesting that we give away income. I’m not suggesting that, you know, we just say, “Well, here. Take this and, you know, go away.” And yeah, I think that what we have to do is we have to get involved with this. We have to work with people. We have to talk to other publishers that we have, and publicists and everything, and make sure that we can make our books successful in our own community, at the same time of getting editors and everything else in that other larger community.

AMY GOODMAN: Walter Mosley, mystery writer and president of the Mystery Writers of America. Among his books, Devil in a Blue Dress and, most recently, Gone Fishin’.

We end today’s African American literature special with a song. It’s a song called “Rosie,” one of the sturdiest 20th century American work songs. It was performed in 1947 by inmates of the Parchman Farm penitentiary in Mississippi.

PARCHMAN FARM INMATES: Be my woman, gal, I’ll
Be your man
E’ry day’s sundown dollar
In your hand
In your hand, Lordy,
In your hand
E’ry day’s sundown dollar
In your hand

Stick to the promise, girl, that
You made me…

AMY GOODMAN: Democracy Now! is produced by Dan Coughlin and Errol Maitland. Our executive producer is Julie Drizin; our engineer, Kenneth Mason. Thanks to Danielle Knight and Joe Gill. If you’d like to get a copy of today’s show, you can call 1-800-735-0230. Again, to order a copy, a cassette copy, of today’s show, you can call 1-800-735-0230. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for listening to another edition of Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now!