"Black Boy," which was originally published in the New Yorker in 1932, was collected along with 13 other stories in 1933's First Lover and Other Stories. Sandra Whipple Spanier wrote in Kay Boyle, Artist and Activist that nearly all of the stories in the volume "evidence the author's long-standing concerns with fresh language, the individual quest for identity, and the need for—and failures of—love." Spanier added that "a few chart new territory, moving away from the personal expression of personal experience toward communication of broader social concerns." This shift is particularly relevant as Boyle's work from the mid-1930s onward increasingly reflected the author's interest in and understanding of the events that shaped the international community as the world went to war. Toward the end of her career, Boyle stated that she had come to believe that it was the duty of a writer...