The father’s lack of identity threatens to engender itself in his child. Rather than instilling self-love or resilience in his son’s inner life, however, he fixates on the bodily exterior he sees demelanization-or Black erasure-as salvation. A childhood steeped in subjugation (his own and others’) produces an involuntary fear of Blackness and a constant, gripping terror that his biracial son could be perceived as Black. Read more Print length 336 pages Language English Publisher One World Publication date JanuDimensions 6.33 x 1.08 x 9. While this apparent hypocrisy is an often unsympathetic trait, it is the consequence of racial trauma. We Cast a Shadow fearlessly shines a light on the violence we inherit, and on the desperate things we do for the ones we love. Despite his awareness of his sheer luck, he eyes other Black people with suspicion and derision. His internalized racism, however, yields a defensive egoism: He considers himself unique because of his lofty education and absent incarceration history-something that separates him from most of the City’s Black population who lack his good fortune.

As a Black man, he harbors deep self-hatred because of societal racism. In truth, his name matters: The narrator’s permanent namelessness symbolizes his indistinct sense of self. As with Ralph Ellisons Invisible Man, the black narrator of this rakishly funny and distressingly up-to-the-minute debut novel doesnt disclose his name. He insists that his name doesn’t matter and describes himself as “a phantom, a figment” (1).

While the entire novel is written from the narrator’s perspective, the reader never learns his name.

We cast a shadow book