We Cast a Shadow

We Cast a Shadow is a satirical fiction novel by author Maurice Carlos Ruffin. Published in 2019, it is Ruffin’s first novel. The widely-acclaimed debut was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the PEN/Open Book Award, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize as well as being longlisted for several other awards. We Cast a Shadow paints a darkly humorous and heartbreaking vision of a dystopian America where extreme racism has become the norm. The novel centers around one man’s struggle to raise and protect his biracial son amidst these trying circumstances.

Plot Summary

We Cast a Shadow takes place somewhere in the near future in a city in the American South known only as the City. In this dystopian America, race relations have deteriorated drastically, and the country’s historical racism enjoys an institutional resurgence and newfound blatancy. Black people face open discrimination, intimidation, and violence. The novel’s unnamed narrator is a Black lawyer working for the prestigious law firm of Seasons, Ustis & Malveaux. As a child, he witnessed the unfair arrest and incarceration of his father, Sir, and now deals with deeply internalized racism and the constant fear of harm coming to his family. His strategy for surviving the extreme racism around is to give up his dignity to get ahead, brushing off micro-aggressions and ignoring outright affronts to his humanity like the police vans that patrol his neighborhood to make sure he isn’t causing trouble.

Together with his white wife Penny, the narrator has a biracial son named Nigel. Nigel is olive-skinned but was born with several dark brown birthmarks which have grown as he ages. The narrator loves Nigel fiercely and is determined to protect him from the evils of his racist environment. He fixates on the birthmarks, worrying that their growth will eventually make Nigel look like a Black man—an identity that would doom his beloved son to a life of limited success and happiness. He keeps a diary where he obsessively chronicles every instance of racism that he and Nigel experience and outlines his plan to buy Nigel a “demelanization” treatment, a trendy cosmetic procedure that can whiten a person’s skin and alter their facial features. Penny is vehemently against this.

When he’s offered the chance at a promotion at Seasons by acting as the face of the company’s ineffectual, all-white diversity committee, he jumps at the opportunity to earn money for Nigel’s procedure. In the meantime, he attempts to slow the spread of Nigel’s birthmarks by keeping him out of the sun, making him wear hats, and secretly applying painful bleaching cream to the marks. His willingness to compromise his dignity and morals lets him climb the ladder at Seasons while glossing over the firm’s support of racist political powers. A violent attack by the former community empowerment organization turned radical group ADZE further sours race relations in the City, leading to extreme crackdowns on Black residents’ civil rights.

One day, Penny finds the narrator’s diary and reads about the secret skin bleaching and the planned demelanization. Furious, she runs out into the street and is struck and killed by a City Police van. In the aftermath of her death, the narrator spirals further into addiction, nearly dying of an overdose. He attains new heights at Seasons but is now emotionally unavailable for Nigel, continuing his tyrannical campaign of skin bleaching and even drugging Nigel into submission when he refuses the treatments. In response, Nigel pulls away, spending more and more time away from home with a friend named Araminta. The narrator finally visits Sir in prison but finds his father a shell of his former self. This realization leaves him wanting to reconnect with Nigel, but it’s too late—it’s soon revealed that Nigel has joined ADZE when he helps the group perpetuate a violent attack and goes into hiding shortly afterward.

It is years before the narrator hears news of his son again. In the intervening time, he undergoes a demelanization procedure himself, taking on a new identity as a white man. When he discovers the location of Nigel’s hideout, the narrator jumps at the chance to bring his son back home. He finds Nigel living on a commune in the mountains. Nigel’s skin has darkened, and he now looks like a Black man. He and Araminta are married and expecting, and he has found a peaceful and loving community within the commune. The narrator threatens him at gunpoint to come home, but Nigel refuses. He forgives his father for all of the damage he caused but does not want him in his life anymore. This decision is solidified by the birth of his daughter, whom he knows the narrator could never accept because of her dark skin.

Spurned by the last of his family and completely alone, the narrator leaves the City and aimlessly wanders the world, eventually ending up in a small kingdom in an unspecified country, where he lives a quiet and essentially anonymous life. He still does not regret the way he treated Nigel, believing that everything he did was necessary to protect his son. He reveals that We Cast a Shadow is his attempt at chronicling his life for Nigel, to help him understand the narrator’s mindset and why he did what he did. He notes that if a stranger is reading his words, it means that both he and Nigel have died.