Introduction & Overview of Black Is My Favorite Color by Bernard Malamud

Black Is My Favorite Color Introduction

Bernard Malamud's "Black Is My Favorite Color" was first published in the Reporter on July 18, 1963. It has since been reprinted in several short story collections, the first being Idiots First, also in 1963.

Eight years before "Black is My Favorite Color" was published, African-American Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white man, igniting the Civil Rights movement that reached its height at the same time Malamud was writing his story. The outcry for racial equality that characterized the 1950s and 1960s influenced much literature, including Malamud's. In particular, "Black Is My Favorite Color" picked up on the tense relations between the Jewish-American and African-American communities. The story concerns Nat Lime, a fortyish, white, Jewish bachelor in Harlem who repeatedly tries to integrate himself into the African-American community by dating black women, hiring black personnel in his liquor store, and trying to do...
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