Early 1960s Manhattan ("Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?," "The Happy Family")

The Manhattan of the civil rights movement in the early 1960s appears in two stories: “Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?” and “The Happy Family.” New York is associated with “the North” and is opposed to the less tolerant and more violent South, despite the more subtle and perhaps more insidious racism that characters meet in New York as well. In both stories, the throbbing energy of the city, especially its bohemian lifestyle and urban openness to change inspires the young people to reach for idealistic solutions to complex social problems.

Brazil ("When Love Withers All of Life Cries"

In “When Love Withers All of Life Cries,” Brazil is Ricardo’s dream of ease, artistic freedom, and happiness. He believes it is impossibly distant and lost to him since a trip there long ago as a young man: “it...