Strange Brother

by Blair Niles

The year is 1927, and up in Harlem the joints are jumpin' with the sounds of the Jazz Age. In the dazzling commotion of the Magnolia Club, June Westbrook and Mark Thornton meet for the first time to embark on a brief but intense friendship. A fashionable socialite, June is drawn to Harlem in search of the exotic, only to encounter a people in touch with their emotions in a way she can only imagine. For Mark, his black friends offer him a temporary and comforting respite from the alienation of his "shadow" world - the world of homosexuality. Through June's friendship and infectious appetite for life, Mark begins to reveal his true self. But as the oppressive heat of New York summer wears on, his new-found identity gradually closes in on him. First published in 1931, Strange Brother is one of the earliest American novels to feature an openly gay man as its main character. Out of print for nearly, sixty years, its value today as a document of gay literary history is quite immeasurable.

Genres: Queer, Fiction, LGBT, Gay, Classics, Race, Queer Lit

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1931

About the author

Blair Niles is a pen name of Mary Blair Rice. She also wrote under the name Mary Blair Beebe.

Reviews

[John Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a while I thought I was reading historical fiction: set in New York in the 1920s. But then I realised that this was first published in 1931. Reassuring that things have moved on somewhat since then, when a man, who happened to look at another man for longer than ‘normal’, found himself committing a ‘crime against nature’ and sent off to prison for 6 months. Cross dressing, painted “fairies” (as they were universally labelled) made it easy for the cops to sweep them off the streets and make a quick buck or two on the side, if so inclined.

What a life in society’s closet for those who happened to be born different. One such, Mark, a straight acting queer is befriended by journalist June. He is the central character of the book. Talented, essentially decent but his nature made him socially unacceptable in polite society. He considered himself a half-man, and as such was subject to all that the powerful herd (Society) could do to him.

An important book, not the perfect novel perhaps, but one that deserves to be better known.

Blair Niles was a pen name of Mary Jane Rice, a writer and journalist (like June).

[Jesse]

"Mark wasn't happy here in this world, you know."

Yep, it's one of those books. Not brilliant art by any stretch of the imagination, but consistently interesting and displaying a sober and genuine thoughtfulness that stands in stark contrast to the hysterical melodramatics of most other gay-themed novels of its era.

[Dylan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Feeling broken by this early queer novel. This text is "memory-haunted," laden by compassioned pleas and broken lineages: "And is he, too, remembering? How does he remember? Does he picture the cottage at Ogunquit, with its flowers and the waves beating on the rocks? Or does he remember the flat in East Fifty-first Street? And when he remembers, how does he see me? What do I wear in his memory? What makes the memory of me real to him?"

[maddie good · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5- one of the first explicitly queer published novels! really dives into the complicated relationship between race, sexuality, and gender during the 1930s. I had two qualms with this novel: one, it's about the queer experience in New York during the Harlem Renaissance and is written by a straight, white woman who called this her "ethnographic" novel. And it definitely shows at times. My second qualm is that the book still feels subtly influenced by racist and homophobic norms at the time (not in an explicit way, but still kind of icky at times). On the flip side: this book was published in 1930!!! It's an incredibly progressive novel for its time, and I can see how this could have been great in shedding light on marginalized experiences. Honestly, Niles is doing better than most authors these days in portraying experiences outside their own. Overall, really fun historical and cultural dive back into the early 20th century. Prose was not masterful but the gay drama was too good.

[Elle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really didn't know what to expect from this book when I first opened it. I had a very difficult time finding it. I almost gave up trying to find a copy. But I'm glad I read it. I have a lot of thoughts to gather and process.

The plot and the characters in the novel are quite simple. We have June, a very lively girl who is in love with this man called Seth. Our second protagonist is Mark, a gay man who feels cut off from his fellow men because of his sexuality. There are other characters too, but these two will remain the sole focus.

There isn't some giant plot going in the book. We focus on the daily happenings of all these characters and how all of it comes together to play a big role in the end. The book is more character driven (that's how I fell) and I think that's the beauty of it. I honestly read this in one sitting. That's how good it was.

And then we have June and Mark. I don't think I've ever become so attached to two characters the way I have become to them. June is such a nice and lovely woman and I couldn't help but admire her. Her sensitivity, the way she listened to others, and how full of life she was. She feels so human. Her love for Seth, her empathy for Mark, all of these little things made her character so beloved to me. I felt her pain by the end. I could relate everything she went through after she lost both Seth and Mark .

I am hesitating to write about Mark because I don't really know what to put about him. He's a character whose world is rocky and stormy. He is in love with men he knows he could never have. He fears being outed. He hates drag, he hates the jokes everyone makes about men like him. I really should've prepared myself for his suicide in the end. I don't know why I didn't see it coming, despite knowing that this is the kind of ending most gay characters meet in novels written during that time.

But, the thing I loved the most about this book is the little bits of thoughtful discussion it has in it. The part about how homosexuality was all hushed up, and now that it is visible, it is only visible through jokes (that aren't even remotely funny) really hit me hard. Mark's hatred for drag- and how he felt like drag queens were the walking and living caricature of the stereotypical image of gay men people have in their minds. I loved June and how she gave herself courage in the end.

I can't end this review without praising Niles's writing style. It's so simple and easy to follow, yet it gets to you. Strange Brother is really underrated and I really hope more people come across this little gem.

[ALEARDO ZANGHELLINI · Rating 3 out of 5]

You might say this suffers from all the faults that make early queer fiction unappealing to post-Stonewall audiences. It’s apologetic in tone; it uses dated frameworks of understanding (homosexuality as a case of gender transitivity); it centres on deeply troubled/suffering queer characters; and it has the requisite tragic ending. Yet, the apologetic tone is not unmitigated by flashes of something else; those frameworks of understanding are period-appropriate and seeing them in action is (ethnographically speaking) fascinating; and, after all, it’s not as if there’s anything inherently wrong with having neurotic queer characters — it’s their overrepresentation in homosexual-themed fiction of the time that gets tiresome… As to the unhappy ending — well, I wrote a book about the reason for tragic endings in older Anglo-American queer fiction (go and read it). So, when you take all that into account — not to mention that the writer (a woman) was obviously trying and mainly succeeding in being a genuine ally of both queers and Black folks — the book doesn’t fare all that badly. It’s also rather interesting as a period piece, if you care to immerse yourself into the lifeworlds of late 1920s-early 1930s New Yorkers.

[Zelma Elm · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hated the ending, of course, but as it is one of the first novels with a gay major character, I must acknowledge that the trope had to come from somewhere.
There were some incredible moments of truth and beauty, and some insights that took my breath away, but mostly it was just incredibly dour.
I recommend this book if you're interested in LGBTQ history, but otherwise I'd skip it.

[Vivian Dunn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brave for its time. The ending was typical for this era but done well.