Ruby

Ruby is set in a changing American South. A century after the emancipation of enslaved people, racial segregation in the South was still the norm, enforced by Jim Crow laws that remained in place until the 1960s. From the 1960s to the 1970s, the decade in which the novel takes place, the Civil Rights and Black Power movements were in full swing. Ruby focuses on the nonviolent Civil Rights Movement, in which Black Americans protested racial segregation and discrimination through marches, sit-ins, and other social actions. Famous highlights of the movement include the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the March on Washington led by Martin Luther King, Junior. The movement achieved massive progress—throughout the 60s, several landmark rulings were made against segregation, and laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 criminalized racial discrimination.

Bond weaves this historical background into the setting of Ruby, using it to further the recurring motif of the way the past influences the present. Liberty Township is an all-Black town in the South. Its landscape is saturated with memories of slavery, and despite the progress made by the Civil Rights Movement, its residents still experience racial oppression. As a Black woman, Ruby deals with the dual oppressive forces of racism and sexism. These forces heavily influence the narrative, as much of Ruby’s abuse is enabled by the devaluation of Black women’s bodies and predicated by Black men seeking to reclaim a sense of power that has been denied them.

Bond focuses particularly on the March on Washington, which Ruby misses by only a few days on her journey back to Liberty. The march is a harbinger of coming societal changes, as the years afterward see some of the most vital legal progress for the Civil Rights Movement. In 1963, Black Americans feel hopeful about their ability to “stir some change into the batter of the world” (97). This large-scale push toward progress contrasts with the individual realities of people like Ruby and Ephram. The changes that have swept the North are slow to take hold in the South.

Eleven years after the march, Liberty’s residents still suffer the effects of segregation and racial discrimination. Legal protections for Ruby’s civil rights are a distant reality that do nothing to erase the life-altering trauma she experienced because of her race and sex. This contrast highlights the fact that the Civil Rights Movement didn’t suddenly end racism in the United States. The legacy left behind by slavery and white supremacy is a complex one. Deconstructing it requires continual effort to this day.

The historical events Bond incorporates into the narrative contextualize the main story and provide a sobering reminder that while Ruby is a fiction novel, the events it draws on are undeniable parts of American history.