The film, Brother to Brother is a story about Perry, an
openly gay black high school student, and how he
hears the story of Richard Bruce Nugent’s life,
a gay black poet from the Harlem Renaissance.
Richard Nugent tells his experience as a young man and
what he went through when he was in Harlem to
Perry. Nugent was often with Zora Hurston,
an anthropologist and an author,
Langston Hughes, a gay writer and Wallace Thurman,
also a gay writer. In one of the scene,
Nugent starts to talk
about how a publisher required
Thurman and Hurston to change their writings
, in order to have their work published.
The publisher claims that their works aren’t going to
interest and please the white audience. The publisher told that
he would only allow publishing it, if only they had written
about what the whites wanted to see.
The publisher tells Thurman that the whites are
expecting to read about Harlem as a dirty scary place.
The publisher argued that he should write
what the audience wants.
However, Thurman wants to write about the way he
sees Harlem. Living in Harlem, Thurman portrays the place
to be a positive, good and amazing place. This is true for Thurman,
he is satisfied with his life, and he wants the reader to
know his life in the Harlem.
I do understand why both people want and doesn’t want to
change their work. I agree with Thurman. Even though,
the publisher is only saying this because he wants more
people to buy the book (my guess), the point of having the
reader read the authors work is so that they
can send their message across. If Thurman changed his writing,
it would change the meaning and message,
so as a writer he would be known, but not for something that he
truly wanted people to know.
Zora Hurston was also told that her
work would not be published,
unless she changes structure. Hurston’s
style of writing is “Negro English”.
The publisher, knowing that the audiences are white,
told her that they will not understand the Negro English,
and that it would be better if Hurston changed
it to white English. Hurston protested saying that
her work were not speaking for the rest of the
blacks addressing to the whites,
but rather her work were for her people,
the blacks.
Her opinion was that she wanted the
black women be able to read her work then
having a white person reading her work.
Hurston is part of the black community in Harlem, and
she wants to talk as a member of the black
community and not as a representative.
Hurston’s reason to write is so
she can speak to the blacks,
her message she wanted to get across would change
if she wrote in white English. I agree with Hurston,
if her point of writing was to speak as
a black woman living in the Harlem, to the black
community, there is no need for her to write
in white English. Writing in white English,
even though it might not change the context, it will
change how the writing will sound, giving a
different perspective.
Both writers have to decide if they want
to have their work submitted
as the way they want it,
or keep their style
and have no majority read their work
There is no need for a writer
to change the message
they have.
