John Woman

By Walter Mosley

The New York Times bestselling author of the Easy Rawlins novels delivers “a taut, riveting, and artfully edgy saga” of one man’s self-transformation (Kirkus).

At twelve years old, Cornelius Jones, the son of an Italian-American woman and a black man from Mississippi, secretly takes over his father’s job at a silent film theater in New York’s East Village—until the innocent scheme goes tragically wrong. Years later, his dying father imparts this piece of wisdom to Cornelius: The person who controls the narrative of history controls their own fate.

After his father dies and his mother disappears, Cornelius sets about reinventing himself—becoming Professor John Woman, a man who will spread his father’s teachings through the classrooms of an unorthodox southwestern university and beyond. But there are other individuals who are attempting to influence the narrative of John Woman, and who might know something about the facts of his hidden past.

Engaging with some of the most provocative ideas of recent intellectual history, John Woman is a compulsively readable, deliciously unexpected novel about the way we tell stories, and whether the stories we tell have the power to change the world

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9780802146410

Walter Mosley

Walter Mosley (b. 1952) is the author of the bestselling mystery series featuring Easy Rawlins, as well as numerous other works, from literary fiction and science fiction to a young adult novel and political monographs. His short fiction has been widely published, and his nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times Magazine and the Nation, among other publications. Mosley is the winner of numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, a Grammy, and PEN America’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He lives in New York City. 

Book preview

1

LUCIA NAPOLI’S FAMILY NAME had been Tartarelli before her great-grandfather migrated from Naples to the Lower East Side. No one was certain how the name got changed. Lucia’s Aunt Maria said it was a drunken Irish customs officer on Ellis Island who mistook their origins for their name. Lucia’s great-uncle Christopher said his father, Alesio, introduced himself as Alesio from Napoli so often that the name stuck.

Lucia didn’t care where Napoli came from. It sounded better than Tartarelli. There were pastries and breasts and something flip in the sound. She liked the way it brought her lips together. Like a kiss, she once told her girlfriends after her part-time shift as a filing clerk at Household Insurance Company. The neighborhood girls would go to smoke cigarettes and drink bitter Chinotto sodas at Uno, a little coffee shop on the Lower East Side patronized mostly by young students from NYU and old Italians from the mob.

She met Jimmy at Uno on a Thursday afternoon, when it was raining so hard it was like God taking a piss on your head. All Jimmy had on was a T-shirt and some jeans and you could see everything, and I mean everything, that boy had, she said to her twelve-year-old son Cornelius, when he told her that he liked Ginny Winters, the smartest girl in his class.

You know the first time I seen Jimmy I knew he was the man for me. She lifted a teacup from the coffee table and used a silver spoon to dump sugar in. One, two, three heaping scoops, then stirring … His wet hair was hangin’ down on his forehead and he looked at me like I was the only thing in the whole place. You know you can’t argue with a feeling like that.

So what did you do, mama? Cornelius asked pushing his fingertips against his skinny thighs.

They were sitting at the little table Lucia had set up in the bay window of the living room, looking down on Mott Street just below Grand.

Do? she asked. I didn’t do nuthin’, CC, just sat there lookin’ at him and he was takin’ me in too. I waited where I was sittin’ with my girlfriends until he walked up to our table and asked me to go take a walk with him.

In the rain? Cornelius asked, as he had many times before.

Yeah. Lucia said, wistfully remembering the wet Jimmy Grimaldi at Uno. I told him that I didn’t want to get wet and he said that he’d try his best to keep me dry, but that he couldn’t make no promises. My girlfriends told me not to go but I did anyway. He took me down this little passageway at the side of the café and brought me into the alley back there …

Then what did you do? Lucia’s son asked. He was going to stay at her small apartment for the rest of the week, sleeping on the couch, because his father, Herman Jones, was in for a procedure at Marymount Hospital.

The same thing you been doin’ with that little smart girl in your class. The same thing that all little boys and girls do when they can get away from spying eyes.

Cornelius hadn’t done anything with Ginny Winters but he knew not to say so to his mother. She didn’t like it when he told her she was wrong. And if she got upset she’d stop telling him about Jimmy Grimaldi and how she came to meet his father.

Cornelius wanted to know what happened and only his mother would be willing to tell him. His father was a good parent but he didn’t talk about what men and women did together. Even if Cornelius could get him to talk about sex it would be very technical, like one of the ten thousand books Herman Jones was always reading.

Did you kiss him, mama?

Oh yes I did. Your father has some very nice qualities but I have never met a man who could kiss like Jimmy Grimaldi.

How come? Cornelius asked.

He kissed me like he meant it, Lucia Napoli-Jones said.

She was wearing a short black dress and black hose, sitting at the edge of her chair and gazing out the window. Cornelius thought that she was the most beautiful woman in the world. He felt bad that his parents didn’t live together. His mother was still young and alive while his father had gotten too old to keep up with her. But, CC thought, maybe his mother could stay with them and still have her girlfriends’ night out.

I love your father, CC, Lucia would tell her gangly brown son, but I need to be on my own, to come and go when I want to. Herman only wants to stay around the movie house and read his old books.

I love you, mama, Cornelius would tell her when she complained about his father.

I love you too, baby, was her standard reply. And I always will.

So after that day in the rain was Jimmy Grimaldi your boyfriend? CC asked.

Oh yeah, Lucia said with feeling. You couldn’t’a pried me off’a that boy with a yard-long crowbar.

CC felt his heart catch at the passion in his mother’s voice.

I used to climb out my window at night to be with him. There was this apartment building over on Elizabeth Street that had a empty apartment around that time. Jimmy broke off the padlock the landlord had on it and put in his own. Wasn’t no electricity but Jimmy had candles and a mattress. Me and him’d drink wine and then he’d curl my toes for hours.

How did he do that, mama? CC asked, feeling an empty place in the pit of his stomach.

Lucia stared out of the window remembering things her thug boyfriend used to make her do. Her nostrils flared and a flush came to her face.

It was how he kissed me, baby, she said.

She sat back in the padded wicker chair, brought her right hand to her throat and sighed.

That was the best three weeks of my whole life, she said. Jimmy Grimaldi was something else.

CC leaned over and pressed his fingertips against his hard leather shoes. He wanted his toes to curl and his mother to kiss his cheek.

How come you broke up, mama?

What’s that, honey? Lucia asked.

How come you didn’t stay his girlfriend if he was so nice?

It just wasn’t meant to be, honey. I mean at the end there he was walkin’ me across the floor like I was a lawn mower. He had me eatin’ dirt and likin’ it. She sighed and looked out of the window again. But he was just a wannabe TV gangster. Him and his crew would get into fights when we weren’t in his secret crib. And then he messed with Timothy Michaels.

Was he your boyfriend from before Jimmy? CC asked, trying to piece together the names his mother had related over the years.

CC mostly lived with his father—who called him Cornelius. The times he got to stay with his mother were magical because they ate out almost every night and she told him about things that made his body tingle.

No, my old boyfriend was Albert. When I told Jimmy I couldn’t go with him because I already had a boyfriend he said that he’d go talk to Albert.

What did he tell him?

I don’t know but the next day Albert said that he thought we should see other people.

Then who was Timothy Michael?

Michaels, she corrected. Timothy was my best friend. He was funny you know.

Uh-huh. He told jokes like Uncle Christopher.

No. Funny like he didn’t like girls.

Oh.

Anyway one day Jimmy told Timothy that he didn’t want him to hang out with me and Timothy told him to go fuck himself—excuse my French—then Jimmy and his crew kicked the shit outta Timmy.

Cornelius tried hard to keep up with what his mother was saying. He put the words and ideas into an order in his head. Fuck was originally a French word and Timmy rhymed with Jimmy. Timmy was kicked so hard that he soiled himself, as Herman Jones would have described it. And all this happened because Timmy didn’t like girls, which was also funny.

… and when I found out about it, Lucia continued, I told that asshole that he could find some other girl who didn’t mind him beatin’ up her friends.

Did he get mad? CC asked, already knowing the answer from another time.

Sore as strep, she said. He kept callin’ me and comin’ to my window at night. At first he said he was sorry. I made up my mind that he had to say it seven times before I’d even consider goin’ back with him. But he only apologized four times before he started gettin’ mean.

Did he hit you? CC asked, feeling fear for his young mother in the streets of Little Italy.

No but he said he was gonna. That’s why when I was down in the Village and he yelled out my name I ran into the Arbuckle Cinema House over on Second.

And that’s where you met dad, CC said triumphantly.

He sat up in his chair and Lucia leaned over to kiss him.

Whenever she kissed him CC reached out to touch her arm or her knee or some other part of her. And whenever he did that she smiled.

Not too many people went to the Arbuckle Cinema back then, Lucia said. "I run in the front and up the stairs to the projectionist’s door. Your father was sittin’ in there with the projector goin’, readin’ a book under a flashlight that he had wired to the wall.

I said, ‘Help me. A man is chasin’ after me.’ Herman stood right up, pulled out a bookcase that stood against the wall, and it was a secret door just like in one’a those old movies.

CC knew this part of the story word for word but he didn’t interrupt. He loved to hear how his mild father became a hero that day, the day he was showing Grandma’s Boy starring Harold Lloyd and reading The Third Policeman by Flan O’Brien.

A beautiful white girl wearing a floral dress with bare shoulders came running into my projection room, CC’s father had said. She told me that a man was chasing her so I opened my secret doorway and told her to get in.

… and then, Lucia said, continuing the narrative going on in CC’s mind, "just when the door hit me in the butt I heard Jimmy yellin’, ‘Where is she, man?’

‘I dunno,’ your father says, Lucia remembered, but CC knew that his father would never say dunno. Herman Jones spoke only in proper sentences and words. He never used needless contractions and always corrected his son when he misspoke, as Herman called it when people misused apostrophes, real or imagined, to jam words together.

And when Jimmy said that he knew that I was there, Lucia continued. "Your father told him to ‘Look around for yourself,’ and Jimmy didn’t know what to say ‘cause the projectionist room was hardly bigger than a janitor’s closet.

Jimmy still threatened Herman but he didn’t do nuthin’ and finally he left. CC had asked his father what he would have done if Lucia’s boyfriend found her in the secret closet, or if he just started beating on him.

I would have protected her, Mr. Jones said in his proper, acquired accent—a gentle lilt that came from no known country or clime.

But mama said that Jimmy had big muscles, CC argued.

Big muscles are not everything, Cornelius. Sometimes, Herman said touching his head, it takes mind, then touching his chest, and heart.

This tableau of his proper black father John Woman would hold as one of his fondest memories.

After that I begged Herman to let me stay with him, Lucia went on. I was afraid that Jimmy would be runnin’ around the neighborhood with his crew lookin’ for me. And Herman said that I could wait with him and at the end of the night he’d take me back to my parents’ house. I told him that maybe he could just take me over to Penn Station because I wanted to get out of town and go see your Uncle Christopher down in Philly.

Because grandma and grandpa wouldn’ta liked dad ‘cause he was black? CC asked, knowing that this was indeed the case.

Lucia was looking out the window again. Herman showed that film four times and read his book and drank tea. He was so shy that he couldn’t even look at me, much less talk. But I knew that your father liked me and so I made him marry me.

This was the moment that CC had been waiting for. He wanted to know about Jimmy Grimaldi and kissing but more than that he wanted to hear what his mother did to make Herman marry her. Lucia Napoli was not the kind of woman that CC saw his father marrying. He imagined Herman Jones marrying a plain-looking librarian with thick glasses and sensible shoes. They would sit up late into the night talking about books and politics, newspapers and maybe the difference between humans and other creatures, like mosquitoes and palm trees. The woman his father married would speak proper English and know everything about boring silent films.

Lucia Napoli was a woman of red blood and chocolate cake; she went to live concerts and wore clothes that flashed glimpses of the full length of her legs. CC’s mom laughed out loud, left dirty dishes in the sink and sometimes forgot to close the door when she went to the bathroom.

CC didn’t know how such a man and woman could come together, only why they had to fall apart.

How did you make him marry you? little, brown Cornelius Jones asked.

Lucia grinned, her dark eyes sparkling with a devious light. The dark mole on her olive throat seemed to bulge. Her right shoulder rose as if one of her boyfriends was rubbing her neck.

I kissed him, she hissed.

Like this? CC raised a dirty knuckle to his lips.

Welllll … yeah, but not really. I kissed the back of his neck when he was readin’ that boring book.

Did that tickle him?

He didn’t laugh.

What did he do?

Nuthin’, Lucia said, curling her upper lip.

Nothing?

Nuthin’. He froze like a little deer come across the big bad wolf. I pushed the book down in his lap and when he tried to lift it up I kissed his neck again and he dropped it. I told him to lie down on the floor so I could massage his back and he did it. But all I did was kiss his neck again and again.

CC could feel his heart beating. Ginny Winters with her big freckles and ginger bangs came into his mind. He wanted to go to the bathroom but he couldn’t get his legs to stand up.

Did he like that? CC asked.

When I moved away he put his hand back and pushed my head against his neck. The film ran out and he had to jump up to switch projectors because people were yellin’ down in the theater.

And then you stopped kissin’ him? CC asked, oddly relieved.

No, baby. I kissed his neck the whole time he was changin’ reels. I kissed it all down the sides.

And daddy didn’t push you away?

He couldn’t.

Why not?

Because nobody had ever kissed his neck like that and, even though he didn’t know it, that was what he always wanted.

How did you know?

I know things about men, honey. I know what they want when I see ‘em. I knew what Jimmy Grimaldi was after. I knew what your father wanted and I wanted him.

Daddy said that after he saved you that you started dating for a long time and then you got engaged.

Your father took me home when we left the movie house. We went to his bed and made you that night.

Cornelius felt like he was floating above his chair. His mother had told him the truth of his beginnings in the world.

But why did you want to make me and marry daddy, mama?

Because no man had ever saved me before, she said. No man had ever been so sweet to freeze when I kissed him and so brave to stand up to a bully like Jimmy Grimaldi for a woman he had never met.

But then why did you have to leave us, mama? CC asked. He knew he shouldn’t have. He tried to keep the words down but failed.

Lucia’s warmth drained away in the sunlit front room looking down on Mott. Her smile dried up. Those dark Mediterranean eyes became like twin eclipses, far away and cold.

I told your father that you would go and see him in the hospital, she said.

You said we would both go.

I can’t. I have things to do.

Things to do. These words broke Cornelius’s heart.

Lucia stood up and went into her bedroom. She closed the door and CC knew that she wouldn’t come out again until he was gone from the house.

If only he didn’t have to ask her why she’d left. If only he didn’t need to know every damn thing. That’s what everybody told him—even his father who had read more books than any teacher CC ever had at school.

The boy took his leather satchel from its place behind the sofa. He put the extra T-shirt and notebook in there, then left the apartment being careful not to let the door slam behind him.

2

CORNELIUS, Herman Jones said. Where is your mother?

He was too weak to raise his head from the pillows on his hospital bed.

She got sick, Cornelius lied. Stomachache.

That is too bad. Tell her I hope she gets better soon, the elder Jones said. Mr. Cranston, this is my son.

A skeletal, yellowish man, propped up in the bed next to his father’s, smiled and said, Hello, young man. Your father says that you’re a great student in school.

Cornelius had the urge to ask, Where else would I be a student if not in school? But he knew that his father wouldn’t like him being a smart aleck so he said, Thanks, and bowed his head to keep from looking into the wasted white man’s eyes.

Cornelius went to his father’s side and touched his shoulder. Herman was dark brown in color. He was thin like his son with large intelligent eyes and the mildest manners. Cornelius rarely disobeyed his father, not from fear of punishment but because he didn’t want to hurt him.

Herman Jones wasn’t a strong man but that day his voice was so thin his son feared he was dying.

Everything is all right, Herman said, reading his son’s eyes. The doctors say I will be better than ever in a few weeks. It was an obstruction in the small intestine but they yanked it out.

Using a word like yank was as close as his father would ever come to cursing. Herman revered the English language.

Language is the pinnacle of human achievement, he would often tell his son. And English is the most perfect tongue in the history of the world. Ten thousand years from now they’ll still be using English the way we use Latin today.

So when are you coming home? Cornelius asked.

They tell me about a week or eight days. How is it going at your mother’s house?

Good.

Are you making her upset or anything like that?

No, dad.

Because you know your mother is delicate. She acts like the toughest man on the block but inside she has the heart of a butterfly.

I know, Cornelius said. He thought about his mother closing the bedroom door. He knew that if he told his father about it he’d say that was what he meant, that asking her why she couldn’t live with them was insensitive.

Did you want me to read to you, dad? Cornelius asked.

Yes. If Mr. Cranston does not mind.

Not at all, the parchment-skinned white man said. Probably help me get to sleep.

So Cornelius got The Life of Greece by Will Durant from his bag. When he started reading from the first chapter Herman closed his eyes and smiled. Cornelius knew that as long as his father was smiling he was still awake.

Fifteen pages later Mr. Cranston was snoring but Herman beamed.

Dad?

Yes, son?

Are you really going to be okay?

As okay as any mortal man can claim. The doctors say that I should be able to have regular bowel movements now. Just a little rest is all I need. Tell France that I’ll be back on the job three weeks from today.

Okay, Cornelius said. I better get back to Mom’s. She’ll be worried if I’m late for dinner.

She will if you are, Herman Jones said, correcting both offending contractions.

Cornelius kissed his father’s forehead and touched his lean black hand. Between the kiss and the touch Herman fell asleep.

Cornelius didn’t go back to Mott Street; his welcome there was over. Instead he went to the Arbuckle theater where France Bickman was collecting money for tickets at the door and running back and forth changing reels on the ancient projectors.

How’s your father, CC? France asked.

He’s gotta be in the hospital for another three weeks, Mr. Bickman.

I can’t do the projectionist’s job for that long. I make too many mistakes, people come in without buying tickets. And if Mr. Lorraine finds out … He’d fire Herman if he missed three weeks. You know how much he hates your dad.

I know, Cornelius said.

Lorraine had inherited the theater from his uncle, Ferro Lansman. The new owner tried to sell the building to a developer but the city made the place a New York City landmark and blocked the sale. Herman was one of the main witnesses for the landmark committee. He knew the complete history of the property. It had been a silent movie theater since April of 1911; before that it was a Jewish theater.

Chapman Lorraine wanted revenge. That’s why Herman didn’t tell him about the operation; he knew that the theater owner would let him go.

I can run the projectors, Cornelius said.

But what if Lorraine finds you? France asked.

He never comes in. And dad always keeps the door to the projection room locked since he met mom. I’ll just stay inside and it’ll be okay.

Tall and willowy France Bickman was well past seventy. He had worked at the Arbuckle since his retirement from the records department at the New York City Board of Education. France was on duty the afternoon Lucia Napoli ran in to escape Jimmy Grimaldi. When the street thug rushed in after her France had yelled, Hey you, but he didn’t stop, and France didn’t call the police because he thought they might interrupt the screening. At the end of the night France drove Herman and Lucia to Herman’s apartment in Williamsburg, in Brooklyn.

Lucia had gone in with him and stayed. Herman broke up with his girlfriend of seven years, Kendra Brooks. Lucia’s parents boycotted the wedding. Lucia sent them a funeral announcement after the ceremony.

Herman’s parents were dead. His sister, Winona, came to the wedding and Lucia’s best friend Timothy Michaels gave her away. France was Herman’s best man. Lucia was pregnant and Jimmy Grimaldi had been jailed because of an anonymous tip about his involvement in a burglary at the beginning of the year. It seemed that he decided to keep one of the rings he’d lifted from the fat banker who had recently bought a condo just north of Little Italy.

That week was a festival of great Russian silent movies. The first one Cornelius showed was Battleship Potemkin—his father’s favorite. CC sat in the small booth imagining his mother kissing Herman’s neck. With the door closed and locked, under the flickering light of the ancient projector, Cornelius felt somehow safe in the presence of the sacred images of his mother’s escape into the arms of his father.

After the fourth film the Arbuckle closed. France went home and Cornelius pulled out the thin mattress Herman kept behind the bookcase door. CC rolled the bed out and curled up under the same suspended flashlight his father had been reading by when Lucia ran in.

Cornelius reread The Painted Bird, imagining himself as that boy running in the wilderness, alone and forgotten among the crazy peoples of a lost world.

3

FOUR WEEKS LATER France Bickman and Cornelius helped Herman up the stairs and into bed, where he spent most of the rest of his life. The doctors didn’t know why he was so weak but they advised the older Jones to consider retirement.

From then on Cornelius went to school during the day and showed films at night.

Only France knew about the labor deceit and he had no reason to tell Lorraine. Lucia came over on the second Tuesday after Herman returned to make dinner and clean up. When she was ready to leave she stuck her head into Herman’s room and said that she’d be back on Friday to cook and clean again.

Why do you want to come here now that I am sick and confined to my bed? Herman asked her.

Because you need my help, she responded sensibly. Her loose summer dress was awash in the colors of the rainbow. Just to look at Lucia made CC smile.

I needed your help when my legs worked and my lungs had the capacity for laughter, he complained. Why would I need a wife to see me suffer like this?

You’re an ungrateful man, Herman Jones, Lucia told Cornelius’s father.

Get the hell out of my house, he replied, shocking both mother and son with his language and rage.

Why is he so angry with me? Lucia asked her son the next day. They were having tea at Uno in the break between school and when CC had to go to work.

Because you left him when he was healthy and in love with you then came back when he’s sick and sad.

But isn’t that when he needs me most? she asked innocently. When he’s sick and bedridden?

I don’t think so, mama. When you’re sick who cares about how clean the house is or if somebody’s in the kitchen making meatballs and pasta? Dad can’t even eat your spicy sauce anymore.

Though the boy didn’t know it he used language that got through to his mother. She folded in on herself, placing her head on the yellow-and-green Formica tabletop.

After that day Lucia Napoli-Jones worked full-time at Household Insurance. With the extra money she hired Violet Breen as a two day a week housekeeper for Herman and Cornelius.

The heavyset, middle-aged Irish maid and Herman hit it off almost immediately. Among other things Herman had committed to memory thousands of poems, many of them by Irish authors. He recited these to Violet whenever she brought him soup or lingered in his room dusting and tidying.

He’s a treasure, your father, she’d tell Cornelius. And you are as good a son as any man or woman has ever known.

Cornelius liked Violet. Her short red hair looked like a feather hat and she smelled like soap.

Cornelius’s life fell into a routine that he maintained through high school. Mostly it was school and working the projectors at the Arbuckle. He did his homework while the silent movies played. Late at night he’d read to his father from the works of various historians. Among others, Herman enjoyed what he called the soft historians, like the Durants and Collingwood, who talked about the idea of history being on a par with actual events.

Nothing ever happens in the past, Herman was fond of saying, sitting erect among the pillows Cornelius would prop up behind him. The past is gone and unobtainable. It is more removed from our lives than is God and yet it controls us just as He purports to do.

Cornelius also read long passages from Herodotus and Thucydides, the Christian Bible and Tacitus. He recited obscure Byzantine translations and Chinese and Egyptian records. The only time father and son really talked was after a reading of some book when Herman would ask Cornelius what he thought about it.

Cornelius began to search the library for other historians to read with his father. He discovered Mabillon and John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. There was the Italian Muratori and then Gibbon’s magnificent History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. There were the historian-philosophers from Vico to Herder and Hegel to Marx; Spengler and Toynbee. The slippery Wittgenstein fit Herman’s passion for the lost past—not in his reporting but in his refusal to accept the easy passage of knowledge between cultures, or even individuals.

Much of what Cornelius read he did not understand but Herman would explain now and then. At other times Cornelius would wake up at night suddenly comprehending some quote that he’d read aloud months earlier.

The years passed.

One evening Herman stopped his son in the middle of The Confessions of Saint Augustine and said, This is the power of the world, boy. The memory of an unattainable paradise where everything is predictable and outwardly controllable. It is all that we are: history, memory. It is what happened, or what we decide on believing has happened. It is yesterday and a million years ago. It is today but still we cannot grasp it.

I don’t know what you mean, dad, Cornelius said. He was sixteen that day but his father, for all his interest in history, did not remember the date. Since he was in his bed almost twenty-four hours a

Reviews for John Woman

[dokfintong · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

"John Woman" is a treatise on mind, race, history, morality, religion and murder. It did not engage my interest and I did not finish.I received a review copy of "John Woman" by Walter Mosley (Grove Atlantic) through NetGalley.com.

[kayanelson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What a thought provoking book. Is history as we think we know it true? The question is much more complex than what I've just simply stated and honestly I'm not sure I always understood all the points that were being made. So the book has this philosophical bent but then complex characters and an underlying interesting plot so it hits all the bases. So well done and there could be a lot of discussion on what really happened at the end.

[jennyo_587543 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I was so happy to see this book in the bookstore. I have loved Mosley’s books in the past, especially the Easy Rawlins stories. I did not love this one though. I’m giving it three stars because I do think it had important and interesting things to think about in it. But no more than three stars because I also thought not one of the female characters was believable, and the whole thing just seemed a bit pretentious. Your mileage may vary.

[dplyle · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

JOHN WOMAN is vintage Walter Mosley and more. This is an inspiring, dark, convoluted, and quirky story that traces the life choices of Cornelius “CC” Jones and his transformation into John Woman, a truly unconventional history teacher. He is the son of an Italian-American mother and Herman Jones, an amazingly well-read and deeply philosophical black man, who lives out his final days instructing CC in the true power, use, and misuse of history. To keep the family financially afloat, CC takes over his father’s job as a movie theater projectionist, which propels the young man into committing an unspeakable crime. To escape this world and the law, CC disappears and reinvents himself as professor John Woman, imparting his father’s teachings to his both willing and unwilling students. Always looking over his shoulder, he attempts to sidestep his sordid past while protecting his career from those who find him a bit too controversial. The writing is, as always with Mosley, gritty and poetic and the characters richly nuanced. DP Lyle, award-winning author of the Jake Longly thriller series