The Golden Notebook

Anna records more meetings with more film producers who want to adapt her book, Frontiers of War. The conversations remain the same: Anna insists that the novel is about racial discrimination—the illegal love between a white man and a Black woman—while the producers endeavor to turn the novel into a love story between two white people of different classes. It would be shot in England, not Africa. Anna receives an invitation to adapt the book for an American company called Blue Bird, which “will not consider screenplays dealing with religion, race, politics, or extra-marital sex” (289). Regardless of the fact that Anna’s book deals with at least three of these forbidden topics, the American producer wants to meet with her.

Again, Anna is pressured to extract the controversial elements of her novel in favor of making it a simple love story. When the American producer invites Anna to visit her country, Anna, exasperated by the woman’s misreading of her novel, tells her that she would not be allowed into the US: Anna is a communist. The producer is flustered and appalled. Anna leaves after the producer recognizes a fellow American abroad; she is as eager to be rid of Anna as Anna is to get away.