The novel is as much about the love between a father and his son as it is a critique about the American South. In the wake of this anti-Black racial terror, many Black people undergo a medical procedure called demelanization-a procedure that removes melanin from the body, a procedure the narrator hopes his promotion will allow him the chance to help his “almost” White-passing biracial son.
Black people have been overtly resegregated into barbwire-fenced neighborhoods, surveilled around the clock in their homes, and even forced, in other parts of the country, to ingest tracking devices. Race relations have cycled back to a time of yester-year in the City, the Southern metropolitan that could be any city. While the motives of the other associates could be conjectured, the narrator’s motive is as clear as it is devastating.
The novel finds its nameless narrator in the near-future at a company party trying, like the company’s other token Black associates, to ascend the corporate ladder. Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s debut novel, We Cast a Shadow, is a searing satire of life in the American South that is as tender as it is illuminating.
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