We Cast a Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin

As the novel progresses, however, it evolves from an account of political compromise into one of protest and radicalization. Our narrator is especially worried because of the metastasizing birthmarks that cover his son’s body: differently sized tokens of color that remind the world that Nigel is black, a fate as unfortunate as any in the mind of his father.Īs the novel begins, it is focused on the father’s struggle to do well in a prominent law firm so that he can pay for his son to have an expensive and increasingly popular medical procedure called “demelanization,” which effectively eliminates any physical trace of blackness. What he does see is the boy’s figure outlined and defined by all the lurking dangers to his person and his potential. The narrator loves his son so much it seems he can’t even see him. The novel draws its power from this unnamed man’s love for his family, particularly for his biracial son, Nigel. The unnamed narrator describes how, in the next state over, black people must wear tracking devices. We are dropped into a future where the country is even more willing than now to follow its worst, most racist inclinations. “We Cast a Shadow” is the story of a black lawyer in a version of the American South. “We Cast a Shadow,” Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s debut novel, asks some of the most important questions fiction can ask, and it does so with energetic and acrobatic prose, hilarious wordplay and great heart.

Good questions breathe life into the world. WE CAST A SHADOW By Maurice Carlos Ruffin

We Cast a Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin