Review: Maurice Carlos Ruffin is a genius, probably

Review: We Cast a Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin

This debut novel is one of the most stunning racial satires I have ever read. Ruffin’s novel centers around an unnamed African American male narrator. The anxiety is the conflict of the novel – our narrator desires his mixed son to undergo a medical procedure called “demelanization.” The narrator’s white wife, Penny, is against his wishes, hoping that their son can learn to love himself and navigate their racially dystopian world without altering himself.

The narrator’s desire to have his son pass as white is strangely obsessive. The reader understands why once we are introduced to the world in which these characters live in. We are given these details in such nuanced ways that really show how Ruffin shines as an author. Details are sprinkled throughout the text alerting us to the prospective time period the characters live in. Almost immediately, the readers reads this narration: “Yes, the City Police van visited our block twice a day. And yes, it had cameras and infrared devices that could look into the deepest reaches of our home. But the van checked in on any neighborhood where black folks lived to monitor vital signs: low heart rates suggested barbiturate use, elevated heart rates meant conflict, no heart rate was self-explanatory. It was for our – that is, black folks’ – own good” (15). Details like these accumulate, revealing to the reader that this is a future United States we are seeing through the narrator’s eyes. The narrator is addicted to “Plums,” that are drugs that are essentially happy uppers. The narrator mentions that the symbol of “the fists were outlawed by City ordinance” (119) and that when he met his wife, she was “protesting a policy that kept the children of felons out of school” (209). Ruffin places us in a territory that is futuristic but not unimaginable. We are given the detail that “Mixed-race couples were rare these days, having reached a climax during Sir’s youth” (46). Sir is the narrator’s father. It is not hard to imagine that the time we are currently living in is what the narrator is describing.

While this dystopian future may seem imagined far into the future, Ruffin pulls us back by showing us details that resonate with our modern day truths. During a plantation tour funded by the narrator’s law firm, run by almost exclusively whites, the tour guide says of the Civil War “that the Northern section of this present nation launched its war of unprovoked aggression on the presupposition that it was sovereign supreme. To wit: the North believed it had the right to impose absolute authority over the economic structure and governing freedom of these Southern states. This was in no way different than the tyranny the founders fought and defeated in the Revolutionary War” (53). Sound familiar? I know quite a few people who spew statements that sound identical to these every day. This Southern mindset is one I am all too acquainted with. This is not the future, this is now.

At one point in the novel, one character says that “There were a couple of guys in robes and hoods” to which Penny replies “That’s rich. They must think it’s 1968” (76). The narrator jumbles our sense of time period in the novel to create a sense of authenticity. There details that show us that this place exists in the future but there are also details such as these about the KKK that show us this narrative could be happening right now. The time details in this novel and its disorienting notion of being unable to place the time period of the narrative is extremely effective in commenting on society now and the future society in the novel without saying a single word of explicit critique.

Place and time are a huge aspect of the novel’s success. The sparse nature of the prose is as well. The narrator is the speaker/writer of the prose; therefore, it is in his voice. By writing in a sparse style, we learn of the character we are spending time with. He is a no-nonsense man. His only goal is receiving a promotion no matter the cost, selling out ensues, to have his son “demelanized.” The prose reflects this. What does it matter how the narrator communicates? He doesn’t have time for flowery descriptions or lengthy embellishment. All he cares about is making his son whiter.

I also thoroughly enjoyed Ruffin’s nods to other canonical authors. The first line of the novel is in stark comparison to Ellison’s Invisible Man. Ruffin’s novel begins with: “My name doesn't matter. All you need to know is that I'm a phantom, a figment...”

Here is Ellison for direct comparison: “I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms...I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.” Ruffin is very directly influenced by Ellison and gives praise at the very beginning of his narrative.

A cheeky nod to Milton appears during the plantation tour titled “Paradise Lost – A Survey of Antebellum Farming Life” (49). Paradise was lost in its traditional sense for the whites when slavery was abolished. This is their titling of the tour. However, the double meaning lies in the idea that Paradise Lost, Milton’s epic, is a story of hell, as it would have been for African Americans. Ruffin is just brilliant.

I could go on forever praising this novel, but these three concepts – time period, prose style, and literary allusions – stood out the most for me. I am jealous that Ruffin is so brilliant and that this is his debut novel. He deserves all the praise that will come his way. I highly recommend you pick this one up today!