A Necessary Read!

A brilliantly unsettling tale set in the not-so-distance future southern state, a Black father seeks to ensure that his biracial son lives his life to his fullest potential, which means not to be identified as a Black man.

A well-thought out plot skillfully executed as every action and character shines on the reality that society fully endorses oppression of Blacks through containment, violence, and poverty.

I was compulsively turning the pages as I felt the this near-future creeping into reality and deeply eliciting uncomfortable feeling.

I enjoyed how the author effectively blended the use of dark humor, mystery, and love of family in this vibrant and rich tale.

The cover, the title, and the use of an unnamed narrator are fine touches that adds to the ambience of this timely and though-provoking novel.

Definitely will be one of my top reads for 2019!

An unnamed southern city some day in the near future. Nigel’s parents want to do everything for their kid, they live in a good part of town and raise their boy with love. Especially his father wants to protect him from what he himself went through. Being black, he knows exactly what racism is like and every single day of his life, he is reminded of his skin colour. It’s the small nasty remarks of his colleagues, the fact of being identified as a danger wherever he goes and the constant reminder that he is inferior to people of white skin that almost exhaust him. Penny, his wife is white and this makes Nigel bi-racial with a much lighter skin colour. Yet, a birthmark troubles his father and therefore, he seeks help in a clinic where demelanization has become the latest trend: getting rid of the apparent sign of inferiority. He wants the best for his son but actually thus, he does the worst thing he could do to his small family.

It is easy to sympathise with the father since he is the first person narrator of the novel. At the beginning, we meet him as a junior lawyer in a high-profile company where he tries to fight his way up, yet is greeted with racism daily – some of it hidden behind nice words, some outspoken openly. It does not take too long to understand that the work environment is only a microcosm of the society he lives in and which has a clear ranking of power and prestige: male white heterosexuals rule whereas blacks, women and others have to fight to survive and will never be considered equal.

His decision to make life easier for his boy can easily be understand in this context, what it means for Nigel and for his family is a lot more complex. Maurice Carlos Ruffin succeeds in depicting the conflicting emotions and the oppositional opinions of the characters. From each respective perspective, they are right in their position which clearly outlines that there is not right or wrong and no objective correct answer to the question of what should be done.

Even though the novel is set in the future and surely the society is portrayed in an exaggerated way when it comes to racial questions, I assume there is a lot of truth in it that can be understood as a warning and gives you food for thought.

I tend to have a great amount of forgiveness for a film or book that comes through with an excellent ending. The first half of this book contains some necessary happenings to give its back half its heft, but it also fills a great deal of pages with an uneven world that seems to contradict itself in the way it wants to reflect the current racial climate as well as paint a more sinister future. Through a great deal of those first nearly 200 pages I felt these two sides clash, revealing a portrait that lost its power by trying too hard to be timely and satirical, losing on the story it wanted to tell. That being said, I found the back end to be pretty excellent. Unlike it's earlier pages that seemed to recycle the likes of Sorry to Bother You, Get Out, etc., these segments were wholly original and emotional. This is a strange one because had the first half been more in line with its wonderful second half, I could see these being an early favorite of mine for 2019. As is, I still definitely recommend it. Also, great cover.

We Cast a Shadow is one of the most original debuts I’ve read in a while. It did remind me quite a bit of both Get Out and Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, in that it’s a clever and effective satire on race. And, like Get Out (or The Handmaid’s Tale), this book is definitely a little bit terrifying in that it’s not quite as unbelievable as it should be. I was drawn into the story instantly, and had a hard time putting it down. Mostly.

This did not seem like a debut novel at all. It was incredibly well-written and honestly felt like the product of an experienced writer. I was really impressed, not just by the writing, but also the story. I thought it was a very effective satire; it was interesting and far-fetched, but also had a pretty clear point. I thought the juxtaposition of a modern world with ideas of racism we typically believe are a product of the past was incredibly clever.

I will say that, while I liked the story, it did start to lose me about halfway through. I was so invested in the beginning of the story, but that started to wear off when I wanted it to pick up even more. For me, the first chapter packed a huge impact, and the rest of the book didn’t quite measure up. Still, I do think We Cast a Shadow is a great book that has the potential to be an important part of our discussion on racism.

I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a review.

Given all the hype for this one (and the way promo text namedropped _Get Out_ and [book:The Sellout|22237161], I was hoping for something that was a little sharper, satirically. This got a little flabby in the middle, but started and ended strong. Great commentary on race in America.

The tale starts at a work function with the main protagonist in costume, he decides to settle for Centurion instead of Nat Turner, all in the pursuit of happiness as a black man trying make a step up in a white law firm. The main characters pursuit of happiness is one where his son will eventually become white with no trace of black or that of his kids of the future, and getting ahead as white, he tells us of this with this tragic satire in a terrible world no one wants. 

Readjust your comfort zones and have fiction make that brain working and cajole one to think on words, utterances of them, and the ramifications it may have had on our main protagonist, with the evil that men and women do along with the hate, on this journey of life.

There is tragedy in the narrative, there is satire, and there is some extremes of one mans endeavour in a pursuit of happiness of an envisioned promised land of his, with the complexities and extremities at saving his son from as he says, “dedicated my life to protecting him from the myriad dangers of black boyhood,” but the world scheme of things does not seem to be conspiring to help him, in a tale that one would hope to be an American myth and not history.

3+ stars

We Cast a Shadow is a dystopian satire — if there is such a genre. Intellectually, I thought it was brilliant. But I must admit that I didn’t love reading it. It was a question of genre and style rather than content. Set at some point in the future in the US, life for African Americans has become an exaggeration of what it is today. Levels of surveillance and incarceration for are very high. There are fenced ghettos. Etc... The narrator identifies himself as one of the 10% lucky enough to avoid the fate of most African American men. He is lawyer in a large firm. But he is obsessed with the precariousness of his situation and especially with his 13 year old son’s vulnerability. As far as he’s concerned, the solution is a “treatment” increasing in popularity that will make his son white. The idea is clever, the topic is timely and there are many inspired details. But I’m not a great fit for the genre. While I appreciate what Ruffin has achieved, I felt a bit under-engaged as I read this one. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy.

We Cast a Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin was provided to me by Random House Publishing Group via NetGalley as a digital review copy in advance of publication in return for an honest review. We Cast a Shadow is scheduled to release on 1-29-19.

Ah yes, we have reached the first “did not finish” book of the year. We Cast a Shadow follows a young, black lawyer as he attempts to climb the corporate ladder while navigating the inherent racism in the system. While I recognize that these books bring important truths into the world and allow black voices to be heard, if I’m reading fiction I cannot immerse myself in the evils that I am already drowning in every day in the real world.

The very first chapter describes a party in which the four black junior associates are being asked to be as stereotypically black as they can in order to earn a promotion. The narrator arrives at the party dressed as a normal lawyer, and discovers he must perform or be fired. The host offers him an African garb costume from her in-house museum-esque collection, and through a silly African dance and subsequent nudity when the costume falls off, he runs out of the house and into a promotion to the head of the diversity committee for community outreach. There’s so much there to unpack that I was completely stunned but also not surprised when I read the scene.

And that’s just his work life. At home he is married to a white woman and they have a biracial son with a birthmark that gets bigger every day; the blackness that he has given him that grows to overtake the whiteness. The father/narrator uses creams, bleaches, and is pursuing this promotion at work to be able to afford an operation to have his son’s birthmark removed. He seems to be the only adult involved that is concerned about it, and the son goes along because he loves his dad and doesn’t completely understand what the problem is.

I see all the symbolism here that is relevant to the struggles with race and society that black people face every day. The idea that a father would become nervous the darker his son became resonates with me in a world where unarmed black men are killed so often we don’t even see them on the news anymore. Where I decided that it was enough was when drugs and squalor entered into the story, and suddenly everything became a hallucination that the narrator had to describe life through to me, the reader. I just…I don’t know. I don’t feel like I’m in a position to see this all presented in this way and be able to appreciate it. It is important to understand the difference between when something is not good and when something is not written for you.

We Cast a Shadow is well-written. The stories told present a plethora of black diasporic experience and struggle in a way that doesn’t preach, it shows you what it looks like in practice. I simply do not think that it was written for me, and that’s why I cringed my way through about 32% of it and then gave myself permission to put it down. Please do not see this review as a non-endorsement. This book is good and troubling. It was not boring and the story was very compelling. It just wasn’t for me.

Maurice Carol Ruffin's book, WE CAST A SHADOW, is voiced by a father whose lack of self-confidence and yearning for his son's acceptance in the world is using every medical treatment possible in this near future world to make his son as white as possible. This misguided attempt to whiten his son is at odds with his wife and is so expensive that the narrator is doing whatever he can at work to move up, despite his extreme apathy for the job and the people who work there. His past begins to catch up with him and with his addiction to hallucinogens, the narrator views of right and wrong becomes more and more askew.
Ruffin's portrayal of a man (the narrator) constantly teetering on the edge of not only a breakdown, but teetering on the edge or right and wrong is compelling. The man carries a core belief system that being black is bad and now matter what obstacles are put in his way and what rational thought is presented to him, he believes the only way his son, who has a noticeable black birthmark on his white skin, will find happiness in the world is if his son's skin is as white as possible. While his views are to the extreme and therefore flawed, the reader can't help but feel sorry for the man.
The writing style Ruffin employs in the book is masterful. In order to help the reader embody living like the narrator, in a drug induced haze of agitation and confusion, Ruffin composes the book with that in mind. At times he is very descript, down to very particular details, other moments his skips part of the action and glosses over things character say. All of this is done with careful thought, so that the reader is guided through the story like the narrator lives his life. At no time, though, does the reader feel lost, just sufficiently jostled around.
Challenging racial stereotypes and prejudices that people have a hard time shaking, WE CAST A SHADOW does what a good book should, entertains and charges the reader to reconsider their view on life. I highly recommend and look forward to reading more by Ruffin in the future.

<b>We Cast a Shadow</b> is a debut novel by Maurice Carlos Ruffin that takes place in the near future. Still plagued by racial discrimination blacks now have the option to achieve ultimate assimilation. The story follows an unnamed African American male narrator who seems to have risen above his natal station in life. Working as a lawyer in a prestigious law firm he is willing to do anything to placate his superiors, even masquerade as typical stereotypes to advance his career. His motivation is to raise funds for his son's demelaninization process. A painful process likened to chemotherapy, demelaninization not only strips the bearer of their color but is supposed to reconfigure their genes so that their offspring also come out looking white. Alongside this procedure clients also undergo rhinoplasty and lip thinning to appear more Caucasian. In his mind this is the only way to save his son. His experience has told him that even though he is moderately successful, married to a white woman and lives outside the confines of the ghetto that he is not safe. His color holds him hostage to the prejudicial whims of society. After all, like every other Black man in America, he still has a police officer assigned to “check up” on him regularly “for his own good”.
<b>We Cast a Shadow</b> is a biting satire that goes where others fear to tread – self-hatred in the Black community. With the primary focus aimed at this unnamed narrator Ruffin underscores the idea that our protagonist doesn’t even see himself. When he says <i>”My name doesn't matter. All you need to know is that I am a phantom, a figment, a man who was mistaken."</i>, he really has forgotten who he is and where he comes from. He has disconnected from his past. He is struggling but blind to the impact that his behavior is having on those closest to him. Although dealing with some weighty topics, Ruffin uses humor here and skillfully tackles them all. <b>We Cast a Shadow</b> is a very solid debut. I will definitely be revisiting Maurice Carlos Ruffin in the future.

Nigel is a bi-racial son in a possible near future. Racism is on the rise, even worse and more blatant than in today's reality. Society, and Nigel's father, have determined that the only real way to succeed are to become white, ala Michael Jackson though he is not mentioned. Demelanization and plastic surgery to change facial features to appear more white are big commodities. Nigel's dad can't afford them despite his position at a well-established law firm. Through the course of the story, he jumps through more and more ridiculous hoops to please his white coworkers who have the power to give him bonuses to pay for the surgeries. Rarely does he acknowledge how demeaning this all is. Instead he swallows it down and continues on his path. Two things for me: at no point does Nigel get a say in what is being proposed for him and at some point in time his dad loses sight of the reason he is doing all this. Instead he becomes solely focused on the actual quest itself. The story is heartbreaking for so many reasons, but all this makes it an even more compelling read.

Every review of this book will talk about the brilliance of satire. And, yes, it's is utterly outstanding. I, however, read this book and could easily picture Jordan Peele making this into a movie that wins Oscars and every possible award known to man.

In post-post racial South, we meet a man working his way to the top of a law firm, with one major goal - to earn enough money to pay for this son's demelanization. This dystopian future is so familiar - and not too far off from our current political situation. In this timeline - black Americans often change themselves on a cellular level in order to get ahead.

Our unnamed narrator struggles with his own identity issues, constantly feeling like he doesn't measure up and his drive for Nigel to be better.

There are VERY uncomfortable scenes - that made me squirm just to read - but it's nothing that isn't shown on television or newspapers of today.

This book goes beyond satire - because all good satire has the element of truth and honest opinions. Maurice Carlos Ruffin is making a statement with this book, one that is much needed now more than ever.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Set in a racially fueled, satirical future south, We Cast a Shadow tells the racially fueled dystopian story of a black man desperate to pay for his biracial son's demelanization process. In this future world race is still an issue of injustice. The only way to truly level the playing field is for black Americans to undergo an expensive procedure which turns them white - on the cellular level.

Does that sound far fetched to you? The entire book takes everything past and current related to race and turns it on its head, elevating it to a whole new level. Ruffin's writing was at times devastatingly painful and uncomfortable to read but it was also undeniably thought provoking and clever.

The main characters are a father and his bi-racial son Nigel. Though a successful lawyer, the narrator (who chose to remain nameless) is plagued with the fear that he doesn't measure up because of his skin color. He desperately wants more for his son and believes the only way to achieve that would be to turn him white.

"I don't have to tell you that this is an unjust planet. A dark-skinned child can expect a life of diminished light. This is truth anywhere in the world and throughout most of history."

I have very complicated feelings about some of the plot twists in this book. The relationship between the narrator and his son was tumultuous and fraught with heartbreak due to his zealot desire to turn him white. As a parent you can understand his desire to protect his son. Yet, where does protection end and harm begin?

It was devastating to read how much racism had affected the narrator's life, destroying his self-worth and his soul. Taking that journey with him, as the story progresses was difficult and just plain sad. I couldn't help but root for Nigel through it all. I fiercely wanted things to be different for this boy.

This is a very strong debut from Maurice Carlos Ruffin. The middle lagged a bit for me but I was invested in the story and never doubted seeing it through. I'll definitely be watching out for this author in the future.

3.5 stars. We Cast a Shadow is a sharp satire about race in America. It's set in a dismal, nearish future, when race relations have devolved from where they are today. It's set in an unnamed city in the south (though I think New Orleans based on the references to parishes), with an unnamed narrator, a black man who is desperate to afford a treatment that will make his biracial son white. While it starts out rather humorous in tone, the story soon becomes dark and devastating, and while the scenario seems over the top at first, it becomes clear that it's analogous to the present day experiences of black Americans in many ways.

The story started out strong and engrossing, but lagged for me in the middle, and felt overlong at times, so it was not always enjoyable reading, but I did find it important and insightful, and would read more from this author.

Sometimes hard to read but always well written, this one will make you think. The narrator, who wants to "save" his son by turning him white- what can you say? Do you judge him or applaud him or just wonder what you would do? What about Nigel? This is satire but it's also a scary smart look at racism between the lines. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. For fans of socially conscious literary fiction.

This beautifully written book is thought provoking and very timely given the society we are living in today. I thought it gave a scary insight into what we could become if we leave the racism in today's society unchecked. I really enjoyed that the story was told from the father's perspective. I loved seeing how far he was willing to go to protect his son even when it was questionable. My favorite part was the reunion between Nigel and his father where Nigel was able to tell his dad exactly what he believed and how his father's actions had affected him. This will definitely be on my favorites list for this year and I highly recommend this to everyone!

The narrator in this book desperately wants to do what is best for his son, he wants to keep him from turning black. Sounds controversial, but this is satire, biting and uncomfortable satire, along the lines of Paul Beatty’s The Sellout. The unnamed narrator is a black man. His son is biracial, but presents as white, except for a black birthmark that seems to be slowly expanding across his face. Set in a near future Southern US that has codified racism into its laws, the narrator wants to give his son a better chance, considering the circumstances, so he does everything he can to fight back the birthmark with new, experimental demelanization treatments. Yet, many forces oppose him, including the boy’s mother. This is a thoughtful, important book about racism, identity, and conformity.

I requested this book hearing it would be reminiscent of The Sellout and the movie Get Out. This was true in the best way possible. Fans of these two titles will LOVE We Cast A Shadow. This should be required reading for all American citizens. Racism is alive and real, and this book brings light to it in the best way.

Probably the most literary work to date that without pretenses attacks racial issues of today, but puts it in a not to distant future. The narrator, who never states his name; tries to balance what he thinks is good for his son and what is right no matter the personal cost. (hint: it's a lot) The prose reminds me of a cross between Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go and 1984. Without a doubt this book flirts with a toleration state. With every turn it has its narrator see a world that he both knows quite well is at odds with him, but at the same time uses those very ideals to try and rid his son of an "imperfection" that he believes will hurt him in the long run. Even when it's hurting them both in the present.

I made so many notes as I was reading this. Though it seemed every time I thought "how could he do that" or "what is he thinking" the narrator would break the fourth wall and say "hey don't judge." (view spoiler) His wit carries a lot through the story and makes some cringe worthy moments seem bearable. Especially for me in the first chapter when his boss Octavia not only lets loose some casual racism, but some clear sexual harassment.

He (the narrator that is) isn't a perfect person, he is a hypocrite a lot. He judges other people who get the "demelanination" on their bodies yet is doing so with his son Nigel. He doesn't associate with his cousin "Supercargo" because he doesn't have as good an education and doesn't hold down any one job. He says his colleague Dinah should embrace her Vietnamese culture, but doesn't completely embrace his own (especially in regards to his father Sir.) This however culminates with his son Nigel towards the end where he shows tremendous growth of character, making himself the unintentional metaphor of the novel as a whole.

Well, I really disliked this book. The premise is so ridiculous that I couldn't even take it seriously. There is enough racial tension in the world. Why write a book that will make this situation worse? I don't respect the author in this context. It's an unnecessary plague of ideas.