Brother to Brother-Prompt B.

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work would not be published, 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.