Talking back through ‘talking Black’: African American English and agency in Walter Mosley’s Devil In a Blue Dress

Abstract

With the rise in the number of ethnic detective novels published yearly it is important to consider how this new genre deviates from its predecessor, hard-boiled detective fiction; language is a place where this deviation is most apparent. Authors of ethnic detective fiction use marked varieties of English to call attention to the ethnicity of protagonists but, more important to this discussion, to highlight the complex ways in which they position themselves against White male hegemony. Ethnic detective fiction highlights the struggles, complications, dangers, and joys of the Other, a character who is typically marked by sexual, racial, or ethnic marginality, as he or she moves towards autonomy. This article examines how Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress upends stereotypical assumptions about the legitimacy and complexity of African American English (AAE) and demonstrates how the protagonist, Easy Rawlins, utilizes certain aspects of AAE, such as signifying, multiple negatives, and the invariant form of the verb ‘be’ at key moments in the text to assert himself and shape his identity as an ethnic detective.