Brother to Brother Essay

In 1926 Wallace Thurman and Zora Neale Hurston, along with other Harlem writers and artists published a literary magazine called, Fire!!.  The magazine was not widely accepted and was even offensive to some because they focused on Negros who were not part of the mainstream society by exploring homosexuality, prostitution and interracial sexuality.  In the movie, Brother to Brother, Thurman and Hurston are shown meeting with a white publisher who was thinking about publishing their magazine, but had a few changes in mind

With illustrations from such great artist like Aaron Douglas, and Writing from greatly talented wordsmiths like Langston Hughes, its no wonder the magazine got attention from the publisher but the radical content was not so appealing.  The publisher thought that if they toned down the homosexuality and "translated the negro language" the magazine would be a great success.  His justification was that it was such an outrageous and unacceptable topic, that nobody was going to buy it, or even understand it for that matter.  The publisher says that “the public wants danger, sex and violence”.  It needed to be more appealing to a wider audience.  Thurman and Hurston weren't too keen on the idea.  As a matter of fact, they were livid.  They thought that this was something that the world needed to hear about, and they were sick and tired of being constantly being oppressed.  Thurman believes that that type of story was 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 defeat the purpose.  The publisher also tells Thurman that “Negros have insight into the world that whites never get.”  But Thurman still fought for his beliefs and did not change his style.  The publisher tells Hurston that her voice “needs to change from vernacular to white English.”  She tells the publisher that, “the Zine is for my people and they’ll understand it.”  She did not want to please the white people, she wanted to please her own people.  She wanted to expose the stereotypes about African Americans.  She wanted to write something that was authentic.

I believe that Thurman and Hurston made the right choice by never tried to be people that they weren’t just to make some money.  It was clear that their pride and love for Harlem was far more important than any amount of money.  The theme of pride is strong throughout the entire movie and this scene especially.  Thurman and Hurston never jeopardized their pride and they stayed true to who they were inside.  They were strong and brave and extremely admirable.