![]() Mosley explores the complicated interplay of race, class, and identity against the backdrop of mid-20th-century Los Angeles and. Devil in a Blue Dress is Mosley’s first published novel, and the first book in his series featuring detective Ezekiel Easy Rawlins. Born as Ruby Hanks, Daphne attempts to put her troubled childhood behind her by becoming the white Daphne Monet. Devil in a Blue Dress is a 1990 hardboiled mystery novel by Walter Mosley. To Mouse, Albright, and perhaps Frank, identity is something to be experienced, not questioned, shaped, or resisted.ĭaphne presents an alternate view of identity as a social construct, subject to manipulation and even willful distortion. Albright subscribes to a similar philosophy: Not only does he remind Easy of Mouse, he revealingly asks Easy whether Frank Green hesitated “for even a second” before killing a man (61). Mouse, by contrast, lives in the moment: He translates his received identity, including physical impulses, into action with little or no forethought or reflection. Mouse, for instance, advises Easy to “accept what he is” (209), implying that Easy has forgotten or willfully ignored certain aspects of his identity, presumably referring to his birth into a poor Black family. ![]() ![]() ![]() Some characters embody and accept a view of identity as something that is inherited and accepted rather than selected or deliberately sculpted. ![]()
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