Tag: interracial marriage

My Guess Who? moment with my husband was a disaster. In fact, the whole ordeal broke us up for a while.

Mike flew me in from California to the foreign land of Westport, Connecticut, home of Michael Bolton, the late Paul Newman, and Martha Stewart (before she got run out of the place). I walked off the plane, covered head to toe with cold-deflecting clothes, but winters on the East Coast was like nothing I had ever experienced. The only way to describe it is, the cold went all the way through my hat, jacket, and sweater to my bones. But there Mike was, his green eyes twinkling and brilliant smile so bright, I was warm in an instant. The hour-long ride from JFK to Westport had my stomach in knots and needing to get to the nearest gas station bathroom.

As the first son in his generation, Minh Le played a key role in his Vietnamese family lineage. So when Connecticut-born Minh told his family he planned to marry Aimee, a Jewish woman from California, and more important, a non-Vietnamese woman, he knew it wouldn’t be good news for everyone.

"It was painful for my grandmother on a very visceral level," he says. "She would always remind me that her father was second to the king of Vietnam." In other words, it was a letdown for Minh’s grandmother who hoped Minh would marry within his own race.