My father always taught by telling stories about his experiences. His lessons were about morality and art and what insects and birds and human beings had in common. He told me what it meant to be a man and to be a Black man. He taught me about love and responsibility, about beauty, and how to make gumbo.

Fine David ed. His parents tried to marry in 1951 but though the union was legal in California where they were living no one would give them a marriage license. He went through a "long-haired hippie" phase drifting around Santa Cruz and Europe.

Walter Ellis Mosley (born January 12 1952) is an American novelist most widely recognized for his crime fiction. He has written a series of best-selling historical mysteries featuring the hard-boiled detective Easy Rawlins a black private investigator and World War II veteran living in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles; they are perhaps his most popular works.