In the opening of “Birthmates,” Art Woo has been locked out of his hotel during the insurance conference he is attending for work. The hotel he booked is the cheapest he could find, and he later calls it the “welfare hotel.” Art removes the handset from the phone once he gets into his hotel room, “for protection,” and as he is carrying it into the lobby, a group of kids knock him out with it and steal it. Art comes to in the hotel room of a Black woman who gives him Tylenol and tells him that “you folk” are better off than she and her family.

During this sequence of events, Art recalls several racist comments his boss has made toward him; his wife, among others, thought he should quit his job in response. We learn that Art’s wife left him sometime after their last failed pregnancy. In grief counseling, Art’s wife, Lisa, calls the fetus her baby, but Art refuses to call it a baby and then stops going to grief counseling completely. Art spends the present-day action of the story talking about Billy Shore, his “birthmate” of the story, his counterpart at another firm and “competitor in the insurance market” (23).