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Eugenia Collier’s short story “Marigolds” was originally published in 1969 in Negro Digest, when it won the first Gwendolyn Brooks Prize for Fiction
. It was later republished in her 1994 story collection Breeder and Other Stories and became widely anthologized. Negro Digest, later renamed Black World, was for decades a magazine dedicated to presenting Black perspectives. “Marigolds,” a story that examines a pivotal moment in the life of an impoverished Black teen, furthered the magazine’s goal of publishing stories that captured the Black experience—in this case, that of a woman recalling how poverty and discrimination shaped her childhood community.Read the full story summary, the full story analysis, and explanations of important quotes from “Marigolds.”