We Cast a Shadow
Ratings16
Average rating3.7
There's more to this story than a father who wants to protect his son from racial profiling. The main character lives in a world that encourages his self-loathing, and his estrangement from his son mirrors his own problems with his father. It's easy for me to want to shout at him to let his son live his life, but I know that I can't truly know what's in his mind. As a former partner in a big law firm, I enjoyed the satire of intrafirm politics. I'm looking forward to discussing this book with my book club.
I cannot believe that no one is talking about this book. It needs to be featured on every blog, on the cover of every lit mag.
It is magic. From the opening chapter I was, in turns: horrified, mesmerized, charmed and very impressed. I don't want to say too much, as I went in cold and I think it just elevated the experience for me. I agree with the comparisons to Kafka, but what kept popping into my mind as I was reading was a comparison to Pulp Fiction. Short, vignettes of action in each chapter, some in the timeline of the plot-others in the past. I mean the style of Pulp Fiction, We Cast a Shadow is not similar in plot or violence level.
There would be a WTF? moment and then the chapter would end and the story would be somewhere else, without me for awhile. I would read faster to catch up, or question how reliable my narrator was.
Pure shallowness: This is one of the best looking book covers I have seen in years. Just gorgeous! I try never to just a book by how the cover is designed, but credit is due to Rodrigo Corral Design because DAMN!
Also, a note, I listened to some of the book on audio and it was read by my favorite narrator Dion Graham. I hadn't known when I ordered it.
Most of us are familiar with “you have to love yourself before you can love someone else” cliches. We Cast a Shadow explores a similar concept. The book is narrated by a Black man married to a white woman. He is determined to have their biracial son Nigel undergo an emerging medical procedure to turn him white.
At face value (no pun intended), this seems cut and dried. It is wrong to endanger your child by subjecting them to a painful and dangerous operation that teaches them who they are is bad.
But Ruffin creates a tug-of-war by showing the many life-altering and in some cases life-ending consequences of racism. What enables someone to hate themselves so deeply that they become desperate to expunge traits inherited by their only child?
Ruffin provides convincing and disturbing answers to that question. He exaggerates familiar racist ideas to show how ridiculous racism is, but also to show the immense psychological toll of racism, no matter how absurd the ideas internalized. And it messed me up. I am messed up. I thought it was really well done.
I understand comparisons to Get Out, and I could also see some Sorry to Bother You in here. The corporate aspects reminded me of Ling Ma's Severance. I will say, Ruffin's writing is quite descriptive. Sometimes it worked for me, and other times it didn't at all. Maybe I'm fickle. Point is, I would go into We Cast a Shadow expecting strange and flowery phrasing. And to finish the book with your mind reeling.
