will lead to good fortune. However, they must seek to attain this perfection during a period characterized by Prohibition and xenophobic anti-immigration legislation. Middlesex depicts the tribulations of attaining an identity, especially while dealing with the revelation that the American Dream is a delusion that has already disappeared. Race relations Middlesex portrays the race relations between people of different cultures; Mendelsohn considered the handling of this theme "preachy and nervous". In the United States, a strongly nativist country in the 1920s, Greek immigrants must suffer numerous humiliations at the hands of prejudiced whites. When Cal's grandfather Lefty, a recent Greek immigrant, is working at one of Henry Ford's automobile factories, Ford investigators attempt to Americanize him. They visit his house to ascertain that he has been living as a typical American. For example, during his first English-language lesson, Lefty is taught that "[e]mployees should use plenty of soap and water in the home". The narrow-minded nativists believe that immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe are unaware of the value of soap and water. According to scholar Robert Zecker, the novel depicts African-American poverty but does not illustrate its causes. None of the characters think about how 500,000 African-Americans were placed in cramped living areas of only 25 square blocks and the bitterness and rage that stems from such conditions. The African Americans do not forget the years of oppression they have endured. However, the Greek Americans, like other whites, fail to remember that the African Americans were assaulted by whites in 1943 and faced over two decades of oppression after that. Instead, Zecker noted that the characters in the novel believe that the 1967 Detroit riots are "inexplicable cataclysms that came out of nowhere". The novel skims over the brutal attacks, lasting a week, on blacks in Detroit during World War II. Years later, in 1967, Lefty is incorrectly told that that year's Detroit riots were started by a black man raping a white woman; this falsehood is never rectified. However, despite this misinformation, Lefty denies service to a number of white customers who partook in the riots. One dismissed customer even yells at him, "[w]hy don't you go back to your own country?", returning the spotlight of racial prejudice on him. The relationship between the Greek Americans and the African Americans is fraught with prejudice. For example, during the Depression, Desdemona is shocked and humiliated that she will have