"Black Is My Favorite Color" appeared for the first time in the Reporter on July 18, 1963. Later that year, it was published in Idiots First, Malamud's second short story collection. His first collection, The Magic Barrel, won the National Book Award for fiction, and many critics continue to praise these short stories as Malamud' s best.

However, both Idiots First and "Black Is My Favorite Color" have received their fair share of good criticism since they were published. In fact, Sidney Richman, in his 1966 book, Bernard Malamud, stated that the story was "not only one of the best stories in the entire collection but one which deserves to stand with some of the finer pieces in The Magic Barrel." Richman also heralded the story's "striking departure from the earlier work," noting that the story was the first time in Malamud's career that he employed a first-person narrator...