from The Mantra of the Dove

June's parents didn't want her to marry Ben because he wasn't Korean. Or, more precisely, since they'd come to accept their other daughter's husband, who was white, her parents discouraged the marriage because he was black. Compounding this misfortune, an astrologer the Kims consulted had also claimed it was a terrible match based on the misalignment of the couple's birthdates. This was not an auspicious beginning and Mr. Kim wasn't shy about saying so.

Mrs. Kim was less blunt, but only because a very large part of her was relieved that June, now thirty-nine, was not going to be a spinster for life. Even if it was a degradation for her to marry a black man, it was less degrading than for her to be childless and alone. And so Mrs. Kim looked at the napkin in her lap with a forced smile stiffening the corners of her lips while her husband spoke.

"I'm not a racist," Mr. Kim explained to Maximiliano Tavares da Silva over jap chae and bi bim bap at Kum Gang San, the restaurant on Thirty-Second Street which June had picked to celebrate their engagement. "But I brought my daughters to this country to be successful." Here he gestured at June, whose mouth was agape, and Kitty, whose diamond ring, Ben had noticed with some dismay, was four times the size of the one he'd purchased at Tiffany's two weeks before.

The table was crammed with little appetizer plates of kimchi, spicy radish, konjac jelly, pickled cabbage, fish cake, black beans, and bean sprouts, which nobody touched except for June's brother-in-law. Off to the side, by an ersatz waterfall, a pompadoured man in a gold tuxedo played Frank Sinatra tunes on a white baby grand. The restaurant was known for this touch as much as it was for the little kerosene fire pits in the center of the tables with which to barbecue marinated strips of beef.

"You must understand. It was not for our own happiness my wife and I came, but for those two. It is not personal. But how can my daughter be happy here if she marries your son?"

"Hang on a sec, Dad," interrupted Kitty's husband, Boz, who was the weatherman on the NYBC Morning News Hour. "We're here to celebrate, not negotiate! Ben's got my stamp of approval. He's a stand-up guy, he runs his own consulting firm, he's got a mean backhand at squash—I should know 'cause he beat the pants off me just last week—he owns a sailboat and he sure does love June. So what's the big deal if he's black? I don't even think of him that way."

"We're not black," sniffed Ignacia Tavares da Silva, as if it was the worst possible insult. "We're Cape Verdean."

"See?" said Boz, flashing his perfect white teeth. He pointed a silver-tipped chopstick at the shelf of Ignacia's enormous chest, as if indicating a warm front on a weather map. "That's what I'm talking about. What's the big deal? Let's order some beer."

"You're just being old-fashioned, Daddy," said Kitty, who was as bubbly as her name. She was five years younger than June, and would have looked lot like her if she hadn't had that operation to make her eyes look more Western. She was the substitute anchorwoman on the same morning show, filling in for what's her name, Ben couldn't remember, whenever that one was on vacation.

"But their children will be," said Mr. Kim, grimly responding to Ignacia as if the younger generation hadn't spoken. "That is the lowest thing to be in this country. I am sorry it is so. This marriage cannot take place."

Ben had an impulse to punch him in the face—not Mr. Kim, whose blind twisted logic he could understand in a way, but Boz Lightning, who was self-righteous enough to think Ben needed his defense. Everything...