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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 good deeds for blacks wherever possible. All of his efforts end up backfiring, as his status as a white, Jewish man continually alienates him from all African Americans.

Critics have interpreted the cynical tone of Malamud's story to mean that the author thought the attempts at racial integration at the heart of the Civil Rights movement were hopeless. The story featured a harsh realism, which was a dramatic departure from the mythical style that Malamud had become famous for with novels like 1952's The Natural, his first and still his best-known book. Malamud is often praised for his short stories, and several critics consider "Black Is My Favorite Color'' to be one of his best. A current version of the story can be found in The Complete Stories, published after the author' s death by The Noonday Press in 1997. Malamud is also known for his first short story collection, The Magic Barrel (1958), which won the National Book Award for fiction.

Black Is My Favorite Color Summary

Charity Quietness
"Black Is My Favorite Color'' starts out with a description by Nat Lime, the narrator, of his cleaning lady, Charity Quietness, who eats her lunch by herself in the bathroom in Nat's Harlem apartment. Although Nat, a forty-four year old Jewish bachelor, has invited Charity to eat lunch with him in the past, she insists on eating in the bathroom. Nat says that this is his fate with colored people, a term he uses through the story. Nat explains that, despite this fate, black is his favorite color and that he is drawn to colored people. He talks about the liquor store that he runs in Harlem and claims that, although he has tried several times to show his affection for black people, he has not had any reciprocity.

Nat's Childhood
Nat uses the current situation with Charity Quietness as a springboard to discuss his earliest memories of colored people. The first colored person that Nat met was Buster Wilson, when Nat and his family moved near a black neighborhood in Brooklyn. His family had lived in Manhattan, but Nat's father, a cutter by trade, developed arthritis in his hands and could no longer work. As a result, Nat's mother started selling paper bags from a pushcart, which was just enough to support them in Brooklyn.

Nat recalls seeing Buster, a young colored boy around his age, playing marbles by himself. Nat wants to become his friend, but Buster does not give him the opportunity. Nat talks about Buster's father, whose alcoholism affects his work as a barber. Even though Nat and his family are poor, he notes that Buster and the other colored people in his block are much worse off. Nat likes the parties that the colored people have, and he watches the black girls through the windows when he walks by their tenements. However, he notes that the parties bring drinking and fights, and he recalls some of the brutal fights he has seen, including one where Buster's father gets in a fistfight. The police break up the fight and beat... » Complete Black Is My Favorite Color Summary