Discovering Race: Twelve Short Stories

Discovering Race is a collection of twelve fictitious short stories about individual Americans around the country who believe the West’s new rules about race. They learn they were wrong.A newly graduated Wilmington, Delaware accountant is offered job interviews by firms thinking from her name that she is Chinese. She isn’t. A young churchgoer organizes a free Christmas gift stall in Boston, Massachusetts, which a Chechen family exploits. Without thought of race, a woman in Seattle, Washington adopts a Native American baby, but race becomes increasingly important to the growing boy. A New Orleans, Louisiana man welcomes his son’s black girlfriend, but she expects his son to abandon their family’s whiteness they’d never before appreciated.A father representing parents on a Red Bank, New Jersey panel hiring a schoolteacher presumes the candidates’ capacity to teach English is important, and that their race is not. No less naively, a young teacher trusts a Baltimore, Maryland school to have reason to be proud of its racial diversity. A Congressman who’d long supported immigration realizes that changing demographics within his district will cost him his seat. An elderly widow in Alexandria, Virginia, hires a Nepalese caregiver, leading ultimately to her needing help from her Christian and Jewish neighbors. A New York retiree considers white America’s future becoming a racial minority.