*Starred Review* I liked my java so black, the police planted evidence on it, says the wry, self-aware, yet ultimately self-defeating narrator of this trenchant satire. Hired (after a humiliating competition) as the black face of a racist corporation, he embarks on a relentless, single-minded quest to medically demelanize his biracial son, Nigel. Nothing, not the contempt of his wife and mother nor the physical and psychological anguish of his child, will deter him from rescuing the teenager from life as a black man. Set in a disturbingly familiar near future, where entire black neighborhoods are imprisoned in the name of security and the bad blacks can be denuded and deported under the Dreadlock Ordinance, Ruffin's debut novel is a harsh indictment of a society that views blackness as a disorder and that forces black men to choose between self-respect and survival. Nigel's demel procedure may be poisonous, but no more so than the radioactive white folk . . . who can't help but hurt you like what made cancer. Unlike his well-meaning white wife, Nigel's father is under no illusions, for after all, what was equality other than a typographical error in the Constitution? Brilliant and devastating.--Lesley Williams Copyright 2018 Booklist