Images courtesy of Maurice Ruffin.
Nothing shows you New Orleans like the people who live there, says the award-winning author of We Cast a Shadow (2019), Maurice Carlos Ruffin. In his new collection of short stories, Ruffin presents a multi-faceted portrait of his hometown—guided by characters whose lives have been shaped by the intricacies of a city both beautiful and burdened. There are unlikely friendships forged under bridges, missions to save old men as the waters rise, and a young man working the Quarter’s corners, who counts the heart shaped leaves outside the window of a john’s little condo. “Everything in the French Quarter is small,” he says. “If everything was big, it would be the French Dollar.”
In anticipation for the release of The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You on August 17, I sat down with Ruffin to discuss his New Orleans stories, his approach to his craft, and how he hopes the book will be received. “There’s no city like New Orleans,” he said. “Read my book, and you will get a sense of what it truly means to be somebody who is from this place, who lives in this place.” Because, he said, this is what makes New Orleans special—who its people are.
In We Cast a Shadow, you built an anonymous world using building blocks that someone from our region might recognize as New Orleans. In this book, New Orleans is presented more concretely, as the actual thing that draws these stories together. What is it that drove you to center this collection in New Orleans?
I think I’m driven, like many writers, by the fact that I’ve read so many depictions of my hometown, and I’ve seen so many movies—but I’ve never seen New Orleans presented how I want to present it. One of the missions for the book—I wanted people that I’ve known all my life, my friends, my family, people around town, to pick up my book and go, “Yeah, that’s what it’s really like.” Like it’s not just party time all the time. It’s people with real lives.
Your writing tends to be very character driven—true studies of the human person. What is your process for character building?
I don’t want to say it’s easy, but it is kind of easy for me. I’ll sit down at my laptop, and will just start writing, and I’m trying to do a voice that is not my own voice. Being from this city, I can just sort of hear voices that I’ve heard in the past, and I try to figure out, “What is their story?” So, I almost kind of ask that voice, “What do you want to talk about? What is important to you right now?” More often than not, that leads to the character in the story.
Something that I very much admire about your writing is pacing. There is such a movement in your prose that masterfully avoids rushing the actual activity happening on the page. Often, it’s all very quiet but happening without pause. Is that something that you have consciously developed, or emulated from other writers?
That feeling of tension and anxiety, even though things aren’t happening constantly—literary writers don’t say it often, but part of our job is to entertain. I don’t want people to feel bored at any point. I want them to feel like there is something happening, something to grab onto. I’m just trying to make it a fun read, whether through the language or through the characters. But there are a lot of writers that I name check. I always point to Toni Morrison, obviously. Nabokov, a lot of mid-twentieth century writers. Colson Whitehead, Jesmyn Ward, Kiese Laymon.
"Being from this city, I can just sort of hear voices that I’ve heard in the past, and I try to figure out, 'What is their story?' So, I almost kind of ask that voice, 'What do you want to talk about? What is important to you right now?' More often than not, that leads to the character in the story. —Maurice Ruffin
Some of the strongest and most poignant themes in We Cast a Shadow are of family, love, and race—how are these explored in your new book?
I mean, what is more important than love? And I mean that in the broadest sense: romantic love with a partner, love in your family, the place you came from. This book is very much exploring that. In every story, at the center of it are people taking care of each other, and remembering the past. What it comes down to is just characters trying to live.
I hope that anybody who reads the book, whether they are from New Orleans or not, that they recognize themselves, their own lives. Because that’s what it is really about. You’re trying to live the best life, and trying to show people how much you love them. That’s why the title is what it is.
[Read a poem in Kouri Vini from the 2021 Baton Rouge Poet Laureate, Jonathan Mayers, here.]
How did you go about selecting the stories for this collection?
I had a few rules. Number one: I wanted to make sure that all the stories are set in New Orleans. Then, I wanted to make sure that all of the stories are realist, contemporary stories—I’ve written some speculative fiction, and didn’t want that in this one. The third thing is that the vast majority of the characters in The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You are African American. And the reason for that is because there have been a lot of books put out by great writers in New Orleans, from New Orleans. But as far as I can tell, I’ve hardly ever seen nationally-published books by African American writers about New Orleans. So, I wanted to forefront those characters for the first time.
A major function of We Cast a Shadow was illustrating the ways external forces in society—racism, white supremacy, and misogyny—might affect a person’s interior sense of identity and their decisions. How does this sort of excavation of the human person within a larger system play out in the stories of The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You?
I think that sometimes you have to make a choice about how you are going to present a social problem. Obviously, racism is something I’ve written about consistently in my writing, but I wanted to make a point in these stories that, for the most part, you’re going to the character first. You’re seeing how their individual lives are shaped by racism.
What do you hope your readers will take away from The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You?
Well, first, that there’s no city like New Orleans. I think it’s safe to say that it’s one of those cities that people kind of dream of going to their whole life. And I think it is wonderful to have fun stories—like that movie Girls Trip—that’s all about “Come to New Orleans and have a great time.” But I do think that if you want to have an understanding of what really makes New Orleans special, who the people are, well—read my book. I hope people read the book and get a sense of what it truly means to be somebody who is from this place, lives in this place, and loves this place.
Find The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You at penguinerandomhouse.com or at your local bookstore. Ruffin is hosting several virtual book tour events, including one on September 1 at Square Books with author Kiese Laymon. Get the most up to date schedule from Ruffin’s Instagram and Twitter accounts @mauriceruffin. mauricecarlosruffin.com.
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