Anatole Broyard

Reading Response By: Marquavious Trice Anatole has one of the most complicated lives of anyone that I have ever read about. It’s not that his life starts off complicated but, when he chose to pass as a white man it made his life more interesting. To start off he has a lot of friends to begin with despite them not knowing that he was born black. I can’t really understand why he chose to be white rather than black other than he didn’t want to be known as a writer for the color of his skin but for his talent. The story went into a boring mode for me up until the point where he had a dispute with Chandler Brossard, who tried to point out that he was lying about his race. He went on to enlist in the army as a white man. These were the kind of situations he got himself into when he decided to pass as a white man. This also caused him to lose his first wife and child. There are a couple of things that persuaded him to pass. The first thing that persuaded his to pass was all the things that were going on around him as a child. With all the lynching and anti-race riots going on and the fact that his father did it. The second thing was that he wanted to be a writer. He thought that if people knew he was black then he would have to right about the issues that go on with black people. What puzzle’s me is why would he go through so much trouble to keep the race of his family a secret. Is it because he is ashamed of his race? Or is it because he wishes he was never born black? These are the questions I kept asking myself as I was reading this essay. But, his life seemed to get a little better from my understanding. Someone in the story called him “a pussy gangster” because he was so charming to the ladies. When took time off to try to right his novel he couldn’t write it. Why? It looks to me like he couldn’t run from who he really was on the inside. My guess is that it was eating him up inside that he couldn’t tell everyone who he really was. The story says that he told Shirley Toynton, a long time friend of his that his birth certificate really had colored as the race. On another occasion he told her that he didn’t even like seeing his sisters because they reminded him of his unhappy childhood. This ultimately is the very reason why he cannot finish his novel. But you really have to admire this story because it reminds you of what some people had to go through in those times. I’m sure that Anatole Broyard is a well missed person because he has some very interesting characteristics about himself that made him a very good writer and a very interesting person at the same time.