Whatever you think of Marvel’s Luke Cage, you can’t say it’s not literate. A bevy of books are either seen or name-checked throughout the latest Netflix superhero series, and one that gets a particularly bright place in the spotlight is Little Green, a novel by one of the most prolific and acclaimed living crime-fiction writers, Walter Mosley. In the second episode, two of the leads debate the comparative merits of Mosley and fellow African-American crime novelist Donald Goines — and the one going to bat for Mosley is none other than the title character. As it turns out, the feeling of respect is mutual: Mosley is a longtime superhero-comics geek and grew up reading Luke’s initial comic-book adventures in the early 1970s. We caught up with the author to talk respectability politics, the thorny issue of colorism, and why he thinks Spider-Man was the first black superhero.

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“We have to recognize the failure of capitalism. We have to recognize the impossibility of socialism. We have to recognize what it is that we’re working for in the world, which is basically as good a life as we can get in this brief span that we have. And we have to recognize who we are in relation to these things – and not allow these incredible, large systems which govern us, but don’t care about us – to take over.”

Author Walter Mosley explores the mysteries of life, labor and freedom in the 21st century – from the failures of global capitalism and the impossibility of socialism, to technology’s toll on humanity’s understanding of itself, its needs and its limitations – and explains why building a future that serves humankind starts with destroying the ideological frames that reduce people to servants of a system, not masters of their potential.

(via thisishell browse around these guys.com)