Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned | Social Concerns

Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned Social Concerns

In Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, Walter Mosley addresses the possibilities for an ex-convict to readjust and contribute something of value to society.

His hero is Socrates Fortlow, a shabbily clothed, impoverished fifty-eight-year-old African American with big "rock-breaking" hands. Socrates has been coping with life outside prison walls since his release in 1988, eight years ago. Through a series of interconnected episodes centered on Socrates and his perspective, the reader comes in contact with a network of problems. Like the sleuth-hero of Mosley's Easy Rawlins mystery series, Socrates inhabits the mean streets of South Central Los Angeles, notably Watts. These streets reflect daily the effects of urban blight, poverty, crime and white racism.

Socrates occupies two dilapidated rooms in an abandoned building on a forgotten Watts street, noted for its burned- out stores. The kitchen, "only big enough for a man and a half," has broken cabinets...
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