When I was child, my parents told me to “be smart” at least once a day. Depending on the context, these words stood in for a range of different things: a goodbye when I ran out the door for school, an admonishment when I misbehaved, or a reminder to study harder. In our family, being smart was everything.

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According to my father, the smartest person he knew was his youngest sister, my Aunt D. In the late 1960s, she immigrated from South Korea to the United States by herself and eventually landed what my father referred to as a “steady” job. He could never quite explain what she did for the federal government, but he was quick to list the things he coveted. “Good benefits and more money every year,” he often said. “And nobody can fire her.” This last part seemed particularly important to him.

A combination of temperament and language had forced my father to make do with self-employment, which was decidedly unsteady.…