Brother to Brother Essay by Danielle White

          The Harlem Renaissance was a time of vigorous artistic and intellectual activity. It was a product of many different negative points in history such as the inequality of blacks after World War 1, and positive points such as The Great Migration. These points in history helped assist the birth of an era of cultural revival, social identities, and innovations of music and literature.

            Two major players in literature in Harlem Renaissance were Wallace Thurman and Zora Neale Hurston. Thurman and Hurston both worked closely with writers at the time like Langston Hughes, and Bruce Nugent. They all started a zine called Fire! where the writers focused on the African American community that were discriminated against the most, such as the homeless, gays and lesbians, and blacks that were in relationships with other ethnicities.

            One important event that affected both Hurston and Thurman in the movie Brother to Brother was when a book publisher wanted them to change their writing styles before he published their work. The publisher tells Thurman that “the public wants danger, sex and violence from Harlem Renaissance stories.” Thurman tells the publisher that that kind of story is not relevant. He didn’t want to please the audience if it meant damaging his pride in any way. The whole point of Fire! was to show people what it was really like in the Harlem Renaissance, and changing the style would diminish that purpose. The publisher also tells Thurman that “negroes have inside into the world that whites never get,” but Thurman still fought for his beliefs and refused to change his style.

            The book publisher tells Hurston that “her voice needs to change from vernacular to white English. Zora tells the publisher that “the zine is for my people and they’ll understand it.” Hurston wasn’t trying to please the white crowd; she was trying to please “her people.” She wanted to put something out there that was authentic; that showed people wrong about all the stereotypes about African Americans that were lingering at that time. “Nigger Heaven was the best selling Harlem Renaissance story written by a white man, but the public wants an authentic voice,” says the publisher to Hurston. There have been successful and popular stories written about the Harlem Renaissance, but the publisher says that the audience isn’t satisfied. They want to hear it from the black community to hear the truth, but ironically the publisher is asking Hurston and Thurman to alter the truth to please the readers. Thankfully they both denied his request, and kept to what they believed.

            I think that Hurston and Thurman did the right thing. They never tried to be something they weren’t just to make money. Obviously their pride and the reality of how blacks actually lived in the Harlem Renaissance were more important than money; that’s how it should be. I also think that the publisher was contradicting himself. He said that he the audience wanted the truth from a black’s perspective, but when Hurston and Thurman tried to do that, he asked them to change it. The theme of pride is definitely pervasive throughout the movie, and within this scene. Hurston and Thurman never jeopardized what they knew was the truth about the black community, and they never jeopardized their pride.