4.1 Introduction
4.2 Guidelines
literature
4.3 Tasks
for literature
4.4 Three
poems
4.5 The
Little Prince
4.6 Malamud's
Black
4.7 Guidelines
for films
4.8 Tasks
for films
4.9 Guidelines
songs
4.10 Stranger
than you
4.11 Bibliography
4.6 Activities to Explore Malamud's Black is My Favorite Color
Gerlind Vief-Schmidt
About the short story
The short story Black is My Favorite Color by Bernard Malamud is about Jewish-Black relationships in America similarly to several of his other novels (such as The Assistant, 1957) and short stories.
Bernard Malamud (1914-1986) was born in Brooklyn as an offspring of Russian Jewish immigrants. Along with Saul Bellow, Philip Roth and Paul Auster, Malamud is one of the most important Jewish-American writers. Black is My Favorite Color deals with prejudice in general and positive prejudice on the part of a liberal humanist in particular, as well as with difficult relationships between people of different ethnic and social origins. It's also about self-image, self-deception and the way people are perceived by others.
The story is told by a middle-aged bachelor who portrays his present situation of failed relationships with black people, which he illustrates by telling a story about past confrontations with a former friend of his, Buster, and a former lover, Ornita. The main character, Nat Lime, tries to make his cleaning woman feel at ease, who, however, turns down his offer to sit at one table with him. This reminds him of past mischief.
Black is My Favorite Color is also a story of changed relationships between African-Americans and Jews in the wake of the events of the 1960's.
Preliminary remarks
Israel Zangwill in his play The Melting Pot (1908) evokes associations of redemption and rebirth into an Edenic age where a new American species is born. This idyllic melting pot concept has been replaced by concepts of multi-ethnicity, hybridity, etc. Ethnic writers assert themselves and have called for rewriting American history and socialisation from non-European, African-American, Native American, Chicano / male and female / perspectives, as challenges to white Anglo-Saxon protestant (WASP) visions. However, utopian views of American life free of the restrictions of history, intolerance, racism, have persisted into optimistic American Dream glorifications rooted in many writings. Malamud's story is written from the perspective of a convinced humanist who believes in the goodness of the human race and an aptness for tolerance and equal opportunity regardless of religion, race, etc., in accordance with what is anchored in the Constitution.
Teaching objectives
- to learn about the difficulty people have in becoming aware of their own restrictions and biases;
- to understand otherness as represented in the dealings /communication with and awareness of characters in the story;
- to increase empathy towards otherness;
- to become aware of links with our own life (for Fremdverstehen, see Bibliography: Nünning);
- to become aware of and reflect on our own biases with the help of the exercises below.
Through Malamud's story readers are to learn skills and competences that enable them to act interculturally by learning to interpret, both others and themselves, by recognizing the hurdles to be overcome, to live up to their own expectations on their way towards humanism and to become humanists themselves (Selbstverstehen).
Black is My Favorite Color provides an insight into various aspects of growing up multi-ethnic in America, in that it
. mirrors diverse aspects of (self-)awareness;
. contains multi-faceted insights into the various identities of
a
human being;
. illustrates the protagonists' being rooted in traditions,
taboos,
own personal history and history at large;
. the difficulty of starting new ways of communication between
social groups and , as a result, of shaping new starting
points
for communicating with each other;
. the difficulty of being aware of self-stereotypes, one's
own
biases and perceptions;
. makes the readers become aware of cultural differences and
similarities;
. makes the readers understand the confrontation between
human beings in the short story;
. makes them understand and feel empathy for the characters in
fiction;
. makes them establish links with their own lives and the world
around them;
. makes them become aware of their being caught in self-images
and self-deceptions.
Pre-reading activities and assignments
Phase 1: Brainstorming
What comes to your mind when reading the title Black is My Favorite Color?
Distribute cards for students to jot down their associations or write their ideas on the blackboard or flipchart. Students may try to think about connotations linked with color adjectives. They may discover cultural differences and similarities regarding values and feelings associated with black and other colours in their culture and compare proverbs, metaphors and similes:
German gelb
wie der Neid, rot wie die Liebe, grün
ist die Hoffnung
Schwarz wie die Nacht, schwarze Messen,schwarzer
Humor,
schwarze Magie, kreidebleich (white color
compared to chalk) sein (with sickness, shock or Angst)
French Black Blanc Beur, la magie noire,
l'humour noir, une
humeur noire , se faire des idées noires, une messe
noire, un film noir, un jour noir, le jeudi noir, etc
bleu: avoir une peur bleue, l'heure bleue,
être bleu
de froid, de peur, Tu me prends pour un bleu!
English black humour, black market, a black-and-white
situation,
black
mood, Black Friday
blue: to feel (lonely ) and blue; I have got the blues
Characterize the type of music called the blues.
Phase 2: Related assignments
- Have a look at dictionary entries on proverbs and sayings linked with colors also in your mother tongue(s). Pay attention to alliterations and other co-text associations, like lonely and blue, black and white, black blanc beur, avoir une peur bleue. Work in pairs.
- Question to be discussed: Are there any racist or otherwise biased
implications in colour symbolism? Compare your findings with those of
your fellow students, preferrably those of a background different from
yours.
Are there any religious or folk tale implications in colour associations? - Find photos, drawings, paintings and design objects with a strong colour symbolism? Relate them to your or a foreign culture.
- Do some research in literature: Do you know of any literary works that have the name of a colour in their title? (Edgar A. Poe: The Black Cat, Wilkie Collins: The Woman in White, etc.).
- Present your findings and conclusions on (one of) the above issues to your fellow students.
- Outline the reasons why somebody should make a statement on colour
and who/what
this statement might refer to. You may write this in the form of a letter to Malamud, from the perspective of a PC (politically correct) activist. - Sketch your own story/film about Black is My Favorite Color. If you intend to write a story, you may be in charge of illustrations, too.
While-reading activities
Phase 1: Read the first paragraph,
starting from
Charity Quietness sits in the toilet, eating her two hard-boiled eggs
while I'm having my ham sandwich and coffee in the kitchen. That's
how it goes, only don't get the idea of ghettoes. If there's
a ghetto, I'm the one that's in it.
The first time Charity Quietness came in to clean, a little more than
a year and a half, I made the mistake to ask her to sit down at
the kitchen table with me and eat her lunch.
Illustrate the absurd character of the situation by acting out a freeze frame scene (Standbild) or by writing a comic. Make the speechless situation speak for itself. Pay attention to how Malamud attributes the role of the victim to himself.
Phase 2: Read the following paragraph
and figure out the kind
of communication taking place between Nat and his
cleaning woman and the people around him.
A large part of my life I've had dealings with Negro people,
most on a business basis but sometimes for friendly reasons with genuine
feeling on both sides. I'm drawn to them.
At this time of my life I should have one or two good friends, but the
fault isn't necessarily mine.
- Imagine the friendly dealings he writes about. Write a dialogue.
- Hot Seat: Interview one of the characters in Nat's neighborhood
about Nat Lime's
character. - Interview the black cleaning woman about her reasons for not getting close to her white Jewish boss.
- Confront the protagonist Nat Lime with the way black people see him.
Write a diary entry or a letter to the editor from your present perspective. Include your thoughts on some of the following issues:
How I've come across discriminatory practice in my life. (To what extent does your experience mirror intercultural life in your country/region/family?)
How I see myself and my situation.
How others judge my situation/experience.
How an imaginary friend gives Nat advice on how to succeed in maintaining relationships.
Imagine a letter in which the cleaning woman quits her job. Give
reasons why.
How would you address
a boss/older person, etc.?
Draw a chart of racial conflict in the Sixties and reasons why black
people display
mistrust/anger/shyness in black-white
dealings. Take
social hierarchy into consideration.
Confront racial conflict issues with the way minorities have
developed strategies
of self- assertion in the course of
past decades.
Imagine a letter/ a dialogue in which an immigrant cleaning
woman addresses
her boss to tell him/her why she wants
to quit her job.
Include considerations of why a dialogue or
letter might look
different nowadays, depending on
patterns of hierarchy:
ethnic and social background,
language behaviour,
age, gender, scarcity /availability of
jobs,etc.
Phase 3: Getting to know the main characters and their plight.
3.1. Textual structure
- Who is he narrator/ who is the main character?
(The narrator both in the frame story and the story within the story is the author.) - Is the narrator reliable?
- Does the author's language/attitude towards people and events make him credible?
- Refer to the title again and find out which of the meanings of black can be attributed to the main character.
- Does the author's vision of the world of black people suit the year 2006 perspective of enlightened citizens? Refer to current demands of political correctness (connotations of the term negro, etc.).
- How does the author shift from present to past experience?
- Is he more interested in his well-being or in other people's feelings? What might be the reasons why he is like he is? (patronising, racist, humanist, gentle, naive, egocentric, conservative, violent, stubborn, etc.)
3.2. Drawing portraits of the main characters, description of relationships
To complete your knowledge about Nat Lime, read the following lines about his friend Buster and on his lover Ornita:
One day when I wasn't expecting it he hit me in the teeth. I felt like crying but not
because of the pain. I spit blood and said, What did I do to you?
Because you a Jew bastard. Take your Jew movies and your Jew candy and shove them up you Jew ass. I thought to myself how was I to know he didnt't like the movies. When I was a man I thought, You can't force it (p. 1)Under her purple dress she wore a black slip, and when she took that off she had white underwear. When she took off the white underwear she was black again. ..I'm the kind of man when I think of love I'm thinking of marriage. I guess that's why I am a bachelor.
[Ornita is too afraid of a common future to give in to Nat's wish to marry her:]
Nat,she answered me, I like you but I'd be afraid. My husband woulda killed me.
Your husband is dead.
Not in my memory.
Racist attacks on both of them are some of the reasons why the relationship comes to an end. Ornita leaves the town and goes back to her family elsewhere.
Read the proverbs listed below. Make sure you understand their meaning. Which one comes closest to a fair description of the characters and why?
Nat Ornita Buster Charity
Still waters run deep
Where there's a will there's a way
There is no fool like an old fool
Don't trust people over thirty
Easier said than done
Silence is golden
You can't satisfy everybody
Once bitten, twice shy
S/he barks worse than s/he bites
Necessity is the mother of invention
Money can't buy you love.*
Look up more proverbs that might help to describe one of the
characters above.
Describe the strategies used by Nat to impose his will
and
confront them with the
reactions
on the part of
his friends/interlocutors.
Nat - a schlemiel figure (One who wishes to do good but fails to do so because he tries too hard, is too naïve, too conservative, too dumb)
Strategies
Responses
on the part of
To what extent Charity
Buster Ornita
does Nat behave like a boss:
Wants to impose his views and his will
Does his choice of words reveal bossiness
(see last sentence)
Attitude towards people: Superiority
Innocence vs. Experience (assaults on him)
(Forgiving people vs. bitter feelings)
Monopolizing- successful or not?
Egocentrism vs. Generosity
(not respecting Ornita's reticence to marry him,
vs. material generosity and gentlemanlike behaviour
(buying movie tickets for Buster, inviting Ornita,
giving her discounts on her whiskey)
- Are there schlemiel / like figures in the literature of your country/culture? Can you present them to the class?
- Does Nat's behaviour encourage or discourage prejudice/mutual understanding?
- Explain why and how he fails, and imagine more appropriate strategies to deal with interlocutors of a different background.
- How does he manage his love life? How does he deal with conflicts? Write a horoscope
- after the breakup of his friendship with Buster/his relationship with Ornita.
- Write a dialogue in retrospect, imagine Nat and Ornita meet again when they are 20 years older and look back in the light of current developments and changed values.
- Interpret the last lines of the short story and finish the story your way.
That's how it is. I give my heart and they kick me in my teeth.
"Charity Quietness- you hear me? - come out of that goddamn toilet!"
Post-reading suggestions:
Compare Malamud to more recent ethnic writing such as novels and stories by Paul Auster, Alice Walker, Amy Tan, Doris Lessing, Hanif Kureishi and others. It's quite rewarding to work with the readers Growing up in a Multicultural Society edited by Freese, and One Language /Many Voices edited by Ringel-Eichinger and Korf, and concentrate on how Malamud's work continues to be highly relevant and on how the intercultural discourse has changed and why. (For recommendations on further reading, see also the Bibliography.)
* I owe some of the above examples to my colleague
Uta Schmohl, to the project ICCinTE coordinated by Ildikó Lázár
and colleague Martina Huber-Kriegler, and to my Polish partners in the
Comenius project Sprachreflexion im interkulturellen Kontext, Anna Przybylowska,
Urszula Boszulak and Wolfgang Bohusch, Coordination: Gerlind Vief-Schmidt
Bibliography
Lothar Bredella, Franz-Joseph Meißner, Ansgar Nünning, Dieter Rösler: Wie ist Fremdverstehen lehr- und lernbar? Narr, Tübingen: 2000
Bernard Malamud: Black Is My Favorite Color, in: Peter Freese: Growing up ina Multicultural Society, Nine American Short Stories, Langenscheidt-Longman:, München, 1994
Peter Freese: From Melting Pot to Multiculturalism, in: Viewfinder Topics,Langenscheidt-Longman, München: 1994
Anna Przybylowska, Urszula Boszulak, Wolfgang Bohusch: Sprichwörter Interkulturell, at Lehrstuhl für Literatur und Kultur DACH, Universität Lodz, Ul. Sienkiewicza 21, in: Sprachreflexion im interkulturellen Kontext, a Socrates Comenius Project coordinated by Gerlind Vief-Schmidt, Abteilung Schule und Bildung, Regierungspräsidium Stuttgart, 2000,
Martina Huber-Kriegler, Ildikó Lázár, John Strange: Mirrors and windows. An intercultural communication textbook, European Centre for Modern Languages, Graz: 2003
Helga Korff, Angela Ringel-Eichinger: One Language, Many Voices, Cornelsen, Berlin: 2005
next chapter: 4.7 Guidelines for films
