Summary

Shiri tells her daughter that she is a rare bird with a beautiful color—although when she goes abroad, she will be perceived simply as black. Shiri cautions her daughter that by being black abroad, she will often be stared at and made to wait. Shiri recalls an incident when she was in Warsaw with her husband, who was speaking at a human rights summit. When Shiri was reading at a café, an old woman interrupted her to ask if she was looking for work. The woman assumed that she was a housekeeper and nanny.

When she later told her husband about the incident, her husband shared his own stories of being mistaken for a bellhop and a thug. Her husband explained that racism is “like a thick mist that obscures the vision and judgment of even great minds” (85) and that the woman in...