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Workin' on the Chain Gang: Shaking Off the Dead Hand of History
Acclaimed novelist Walter Mosley spins a different yarn in Workin' on the Chain Gang, imploring citizens to solve the social, economic, racial, and political crimes of late-20th-century civilization. Mosley takes aim at the average American's feelings of disempowerment and--while he is quick to point out the role race plays--he also states: "The problem facing Americans today does not originate from racial conflict. The problem is the enslavement of a whole nation to the rather small and insignificant goals of the few who own (or control) almost everything." Mosley covers a lot of ground--from Plato's Republic to his own bid for the presidency--but through it all, his faith rests in the individual to change the world through changing his or her own world; he cites as an example his creative powers as a writer to turn fiction into reality. Mosley calls for us to "recognize some of the restraints placed on us by the organization of labor and popular culture, then to see, from a calm place, that there might be a world in our hearts that we would like to realize, first by speaking out, then by shouting out, and finally by action." --Eugene Holley Jr.
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
About the author
Walter Mosley
211 books3,964 followersWalter 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.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
July 7, 2015
This is another one I wish a lot more people in America today would read. It's short enough. Many of us like to think we've come so far, but if you look at our technological advancement measured alongside our spiritual advancement, we're basically pathetic, Mosley points out early on to tremendous effect, juxtaposing human advancement (baby steps towards women's and civil rights) while we went from the locomotive to the goddamned moon.
We overwhelmingly perpetuate the world that we inherited that was in pretty shitty shape, and keep it pretty horrible for everyone around us, throwing our hands up like we can't do much better, the problems are insurmountable, this is the way it is. We have scientific advancement, but don't do nearly enough good with it. "Our abilities far outreach our actions," Mosley states, then goes into how much we've even given up the ability to make decisions in our lives, and how we're going to have some real problems "if we cannot free ourselves from those cold chains anchored in the crimes and ignorance of the past hundred or more years."
Written just before the millennium switch, it's prophetic in its views about where we were and were headed with race relations and so much more, it's about oppressors oppressing themselves, how we all do that, how we all end up in these chains. How we shouldn't define advancement in the passage of time, but by how much we've done in that time. All simple stuff, but told with an insightful and brilliant way of tying it all together.
“If we have to recognize the passing of the millennium it would be more appropriate, I feel, to mourn the passage of that thousand years. A thousand years and genocide is still with us. A thousand years and children are still starving.” "The human race's birthday means very little to one who is starving or dying." "We should, I believe, regret the passage of so many years during which we could have been moving forward."
He dares us to imagine taking three months off of electronic distractions and sports, time to just be in our minds, to see what thoughts we might have, to be with our friends and family (maybe even play our own sports games instead of watching highly paid performers), and see what happens. He supposes, "The center of your life might drift back into a form that includes you as someone who is important."
He knows this wouldn't be easy, the pain of having to be so much in your own life would be "equisite," "To face one's own life, with all its inadequacies, for twelve weeks--a great many Americans just could not do it."
“This is what all Americans need to say. Stand aside. I will not accept your inferior products, your half-hearted health care, your apologies for my unemployment after twenty-two years without a sick day. I built America, one needs to say and to remember, as did my ancestry. And America owes me something. I am here to call that debt due.”
Mosley has many insightful distillations here, and many questions he poses that could help us all focus our thoughts in moving forward.
We overwhelmingly perpetuate the world that we inherited that was in pretty shitty shape, and keep it pretty horrible for everyone around us, throwing our hands up like we can't do much better, the problems are insurmountable, this is the way it is. We have scientific advancement, but don't do nearly enough good with it. "Our abilities far outreach our actions," Mosley states, then goes into how much we've even given up the ability to make decisions in our lives, and how we're going to have some real problems "if we cannot free ourselves from those cold chains anchored in the crimes and ignorance of the past hundred or more years."
Written just before the millennium switch, it's prophetic in its views about where we were and were headed with race relations and so much more, it's about oppressors oppressing themselves, how we all do that, how we all end up in these chains. How we shouldn't define advancement in the passage of time, but by how much we've done in that time. All simple stuff, but told with an insightful and brilliant way of tying it all together.
“If we have to recognize the passing of the millennium it would be more appropriate, I feel, to mourn the passage of that thousand years. A thousand years and genocide is still with us. A thousand years and children are still starving.” "The human race's birthday means very little to one who is starving or dying." "We should, I believe, regret the passage of so many years during which we could have been moving forward."
He dares us to imagine taking three months off of electronic distractions and sports, time to just be in our minds, to see what thoughts we might have, to be with our friends and family (maybe even play our own sports games instead of watching highly paid performers), and see what happens. He supposes, "The center of your life might drift back into a form that includes you as someone who is important."
He knows this wouldn't be easy, the pain of having to be so much in your own life would be "equisite," "To face one's own life, with all its inadequacies, for twelve weeks--a great many Americans just could not do it."
“This is what all Americans need to say. Stand aside. I will not accept your inferior products, your half-hearted health care, your apologies for my unemployment after twenty-two years without a sick day. I built America, one needs to say and to remember, as did my ancestry. And America owes me something. I am here to call that debt due.”
Mosley has many insightful distillations here, and many questions he poses that could help us all focus our thoughts in moving forward.
Read
November 29, 2011Ballantine, in its Library of Contemporary Thought series, commissioned Walter Mosley to write about race and economics at the millennium. The result is this brief but exhilaratingly impassioned volume, and I look forward enormously to what I suspect is its follow-up, TWELVE STEPS TOWARD POLITICAL REVELATION (Nation Books, 2011).
Mosley is justly celebrated for creating the Easy Rawlins mysteries, the visionary RL'S DREAM, and the Socrates Fortlow works, but he has also earned a nearly heroic reputation for hands-on activism in the literary community, including his support of institutions as diverse as the Poetry Society of America and the Black Classic Press. WORKIN' ON THE CHAIN GANG draws both on his activism and his imagination, and the result is a lyrically insightful, elegantly argued, and morally bracing book.
Mosley uses metaphor to unite, rather than divide, those less than enchanted by our neo-gilded age, now deeply tarnished. ”There is an echo of Jim Crow in the HMO,“ he writes, in the way people are ”shunted aside, denied access, and allowed to suffer with no real democratic resource. Downsizing is an excellent way of robbing a worker of her accrued wealth. The widening gap between rich and poor is a way of demonizing the latter, because poverty is a sin in the richest country in the world. These new systems of injustice wear the trappings of freedom, but they are just as unacceptable as their forebears.“
Everyone in our country, Mosley insists, can learn from slavery’s legacy, which he calls ”a torch in the darkness“ for its strength, resistance, and creativity in dealing with oppression and marginalization. What other example are the current protestors on Wall Street, who are coming from all over the country to confront joblessness and the corporate takeover of America, following if not that of the Civil Rights era, which carried that torch into the 20th century. Indeed, Mosley states outright what the other writers mentioned above imply: ”Black American history is American history.“
For a recent interview in advance of his appearance at the Southern Festival of Books, other interested readers might take a look at a compelling exchange between Mosley and Michael Ray Taylor (http://www.chapter16.org/content/defe...) or look at my own review here of a new volume issued in the University Press of Mississippi's "Conversations" series. You'll find some repeated information, yes, but some freshly added items as well (http://www.goodreads.com/review/edit/...).
Mosley is justly celebrated for creating the Easy Rawlins mysteries, the visionary RL'S DREAM, and the Socrates Fortlow works, but he has also earned a nearly heroic reputation for hands-on activism in the literary community, including his support of institutions as diverse as the Poetry Society of America and the Black Classic Press. WORKIN' ON THE CHAIN GANG draws both on his activism and his imagination, and the result is a lyrically insightful, elegantly argued, and morally bracing book.
Mosley uses metaphor to unite, rather than divide, those less than enchanted by our neo-gilded age, now deeply tarnished. ”There is an echo of Jim Crow in the HMO,“ he writes, in the way people are ”shunted aside, denied access, and allowed to suffer with no real democratic resource. Downsizing is an excellent way of robbing a worker of her accrued wealth. The widening gap between rich and poor is a way of demonizing the latter, because poverty is a sin in the richest country in the world. These new systems of injustice wear the trappings of freedom, but they are just as unacceptable as their forebears.“
Everyone in our country, Mosley insists, can learn from slavery’s legacy, which he calls ”a torch in the darkness“ for its strength, resistance, and creativity in dealing with oppression and marginalization. What other example are the current protestors on Wall Street, who are coming from all over the country to confront joblessness and the corporate takeover of America, following if not that of the Civil Rights era, which carried that torch into the 20th century. Indeed, Mosley states outright what the other writers mentioned above imply: ”Black American history is American history.“
For a recent interview in advance of his appearance at the Southern Festival of Books, other interested readers might take a look at a compelling exchange between Mosley and Michael Ray Taylor (http://www.chapter16.org/content/defe...) or look at my own review here of a new volume issued in the University Press of Mississippi's "Conversations" series. You'll find some repeated information, yes, but some freshly added items as well (http://www.goodreads.com/review/edit/...).
April 24, 2022
Walter Mosley if one of my favorite writers. He can write just about any genre etc. This short essay style read was packed with a lot. The first ideas that stick out is all this advancement in technology, but as a society we still have hunger, poverty, etc. because the system isn’t designed to fix thise things because it isn’t profitable. The political system
Is not really for the people that’s why it’s only two parties to choose from. It is about financial gain.
We work in a wage/labor system that doesnt benefit us we are the profit margin for the corporations. Out taxes pay for things we dont control including politics, judges, etc. and we have no say say over many of these decisions, but we are promised better roads or better schools but it never really works out. Jails are big businesses and of course mirror Jim Crow and slavery. He goes on to state that all citizens should automatically have access to advancements in education, medical care, etc and not be subjected to pay for these things or have wealth to access these things. It should be something that is beneficial to take care of the citizens and keep society going. The last tidbit that stick out was this:
The true constituents of politicians is money. Appt of these things have been discussed and been more discussed in recent years, but he definitely dropped some of his wisdom and gems in this. Great read. Great author.
Is not really for the people that’s why it’s only two parties to choose from. It is about financial gain.
We work in a wage/labor system that doesnt benefit us we are the profit margin for the corporations. Out taxes pay for things we dont control including politics, judges, etc. and we have no say say over many of these decisions, but we are promised better roads or better schools but it never really works out. Jails are big businesses and of course mirror Jim Crow and slavery. He goes on to state that all citizens should automatically have access to advancements in education, medical care, etc and not be subjected to pay for these things or have wealth to access these things. It should be something that is beneficial to take care of the citizens and keep society going. The last tidbit that stick out was this:
The true constituents of politicians is money. Appt of these things have been discussed and been more discussed in recent years, but he definitely dropped some of his wisdom and gems in this. Great read. Great author.
October 14, 2025
Mosley astutely expands the conversation around race and inequality into broader discussions of identity, labor, and cultural systems. Rather than isolating any single issue, he examines how these forces interact to constrain individual agency. One of the book’s strengths is its moral challenge: Mosley insists that telling the truth, in all situations, is an urgent act of resistance. While we could debate on what defines truth, Mosley’s exhortation is refreshing in the current zeitgeist. His call to honesty and clarity gives the book its lasting weight, even in its brevity.
That said, the book leans more on abstract reflection than personal narrative. I also found myself questioning some of foundational assumptions that form the basis of his assertions. Still, it’s a quick read that raises good questions and encourages readers to think beyond themselves.
That said, the book leans more on abstract reflection than personal narrative. I also found myself questioning some of foundational assumptions that form the basis of his assertions. Still, it’s a quick read that raises good questions and encourages readers to think beyond themselves.
July 10, 2023
Thus short work is exceptional and worth listening to or reading. In fact I’m going to listen again as well as read the print version to make sure I’m getting it all. This is NOT a work solely for African-Americans but applies to any working class people in America. It truly impacts everyone that calls America their home. Please read/listen to this.
April 14, 2018
I am underwhelmed. It's short and reasonably clear, but too aphoristic, seeming more profound than it really is. It's also out of date, made so by today's realities.. I like Mosley's fiction, but I will hope for a better work of nonfiction.
September 27, 2017
2.5 stars. I only liked the parts in human slavery since I see it up close five days a week. He also covered in capitalism, products vs profit, is what our America society is built on.
February 14, 2018
Read it. Listen to it.
September 18, 2019
Not what I expected since I just borrowed it because Walter Mosly wrote it. This is the analytical philosopher Mosley.
September 29, 2019
This book is a jewel. Such an eloquent reflection upon this social and economic history of the USA.
October 16, 2021
Enlightening but not heavy handed. A little dated but still relevant, unfortunately.
March 20, 2023
interesting topics but no depth
July 12, 2023
Everyone working for their living should listen to this one.
May 1, 2014
In this book written on the verge of Y2K, Walter Mosley turns momentarily from the mystery genre that made his reputation and to the problem of racism and market capitalism. Workin' on the Chain Gang: Shaking Off the Dead Hand of History is not just about the African-American, but everyone else who is under the same thumb. Mosley sees us all in thrall to the bread and circuses of the entertainment media. he urges all of us to make an experiment by giving up sports and the media for a period of ninety days:
The fact that a Donald Sterling or a Cliven Bundy can feel more free to speak out their own nefarious views now than at any other time in recent history. With the Tea Party and the rise of Libertarianism, we have taken retrograde steps in an attempt to erase everything good that has happened since Lincoln's presidency. We elected a black President, true, but have done everything to revile and hobble him. This is not just slavery, but self-willed slavery.
Mosley's polemic is not only substantially true, but helpful to all of us as Americans, irrespective of our race.
I loved it when Mosley wrote that he would begin to feel comfortable if, a white man being told a black man had just entered his house, would ask, "Oh, what was he like?"
Of course, to do that one would have to concede that most of popular entertainment and so-called news is really an attempt (conscious or not) to distract us from thinking too much about the truth, about the reality of our lives.Admittedly, Mosley is looking at our situation as Americans before the awful events of September 11, 2001: The odd thing is that nothing has really changed. If anything, we are a far more oppressed people than we were in 2000.
The fact that a Donald Sterling or a Cliven Bundy can feel more free to speak out their own nefarious views now than at any other time in recent history. With the Tea Party and the rise of Libertarianism, we have taken retrograde steps in an attempt to erase everything good that has happened since Lincoln's presidency. We elected a black President, true, but have done everything to revile and hobble him. This is not just slavery, but self-willed slavery.
Mosley's polemic is not only substantially true, but helpful to all of us as Americans, irrespective of our race.
I loved it when Mosley wrote that he would begin to feel comfortable if, a white man being told a black man had just entered his house, would ask, "Oh, what was he like?"
January 30, 2016
A short read, challenging the holder of the book to see all of us -- not just certain minorities -- as slaves to a capitalist system in which money itself becomes more important than anything. The author does not suggest any changes, but does point out how other people's ideas, like the Communist social experiments, have failed. He does suggest that people need to decide what they really want out of life and start organizing with others who want the same things.
October 20, 2011
Valued the perspective of a black man who stretched my understanding of our country - and the terms democracy and capitalism. Clued me in on some of my own frustrations when I think we are a democracy first.
Made me more interested when twice I heard about The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein. Am reading that now, 11/20/11.
Made me more interested when twice I heard about The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein. Am reading that now, 11/20/11.
July 31, 2025
Walter Mosley's Masterclass is challenging, so it this essay. His eloquent exploration of life as an American, along with some simple homework to just write down some things about how you envision your life. Revisit those things. Talk about those things. Vote about those things. Keep revisiting those things in hopes that one day reality and your list will line up in agreement with freedom.
November 24, 2008
Written before the 2000 election. Anyone who works for others is workin' on the chain gang. He suggested. we turn off the TV for a year and figure out what to do with our lives. Hmmm - eight years later, and another election. Wonder what his next essay will suggest? I love this writer.
Read
October 27, 2009Absolutely on point! No better book to share that African American history is really a part of America's sordid past. Let's learn from the past so that we are integral in helping to create real social and economic justice.
January 30, 2008
amazing all the way through
June 14, 2009
Think about getting together with friends to talk about what you want out of life. Could you give up TV, radio, movies, pop media for three months? Change the world by changing yourself.
January 13, 2023
Adding estimated read date toady, 01/13/2023.
June 19, 2013
Really powerful thoughts. This is a great book by a great thinker.
April 3, 2014
Children are starving but that has nothing to do with business.
February 16, 2016
"The best way to keep a worker working is to bedazzle her or him. Sublimation is the best remedy for rebellion. Give them something inconsequential to think about or a dream that leads nowhere"
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September 5, 2019ebook format available at Open Library https://openlibrary.org/books/OL33443...
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews