“Everything that everyone had ever thought about Ray—about people who looked like Ray—was now turning into reality with an inevitability that he almost welcomed, it was so expected. He was bringing their words to life.”

This moment illustrates Ray’s internalization of racist vitriol. Slocumb immediately alludes to W. E. B. Du Bois’s influential idea of “double-consciousness”—“a sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others”—which returns throughout the novel (Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. Oxford University Press, 2007 [1903]). Here, Ray’s reaction shows that he has absorbed the Racial Prejudice and Preconception that he has spent a lifetime facing and has in some way begun to believe it about himself.

“He hadn’t played the simple melody for so long but somehow it always lay there, just beyond the furthest reaches of his hearing, the song he played so often for Grandma Nora, and he played it for her now, the unpretentious tune pouring down and echoing and repeating. Lovely was the word ‘Rhosymedre’ translated, and he closed his eyes and for a moment just let its sweetness wash him clean.”

This particular song becomes a recurring motif throughout the novel and serves as one of the few connections Ray has to his grandmother. The word “sweetness,” in particular, echoes his grandmother’s wishes for him at the start of his career. This moment highlights the fact that his connection to her is a constant undercurrent under everything he does, even as he learns more complex techniques and moves up in the classical music industry.

“So here’s what you do if you’re a Black guy trying to make it work in an unfamiliar world: You just put your head down and do the work. You do twice as much work as the white guy sitting next to you, and you do it twice as often, and you get half as far. But you do it.”

In this moment, Slocumb shifts to second person to break the fourth wall and begin speaking to the reader. This quote becomes a thesis statement for the entire novel, encompassing one of the key messages that the author is trying to communicate through his work.