Study Of The Longing For Home Of African Americans In The Easy Rawlins Series

The dissertation explores African American’s pursuit for home after WWII in Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins series. Walter Mosley is a beloved African American detective writer who is famous for his whodunit series of the hardboil detective Easy Rawlins. Mosley discusses postcolonial, multiracial, moral and social issues in the traditional crime fiction genre and expressed his quest for truth. By incorporating issues of race into mystery novels, his work enriched American literature and embodies great literature and social values. However, domestic studies on detective fiction and Mosley’s work have been nearly blank throughout the years.The whole Easy Rawlins series set from 1939 to 1966 with a span of over 25 years. It was a great time of black consciousness when a great number of African Americans migrated from the south to the north after the Second World War in the pursuit of individual human rights as well as the American Dream. Many African Americans, like the private eye Easy Rawlins, come all the way to the north in search of their own "home" in United States only to find it impossible. They wish to break the boundary of racism and reach an upward mobility through hard work yet all the privileges and rights they need to realize an upward mobility or racial equality have been deprived from them. In the light of this phenomenon, it would be impossible for them to gain the sense of belonging and feel "at home" in their own country. The American dream coined under the influence American Creed and the African American Migration would be just an illusion.The dissertation is composed of five parts. The introduction part gives a brief introduction to the writer Walter Mosley and his Easy Rawlins series. A literature review is made to show the status quo of domestic and international study on Walter Mosley together with the task and method of the dissertation. The first chapter will discuss African American detective Easy Rawlins’quest for material and spiritual home by struggling towards a decent stable life from the end of the Second World War to the late 1960s throughout the 13 Easy series books based on a close reading of texts. The second chapter will analyze the reason of his pursuit from historical, social and racial perspectives dealing with the past, present and future issues. The third chapter mainly discusses with Easy’s strategy to attain an ideal home and why he failed. The last chapter will be the conclusion.