On Race in Publishing and Affirmative Action

In the latest publishing brouhaha, the poet Michael Derrick Hudson had a poem published in The Best American Poetry under the pseudonym Yi-Fen Chou. In a note in the volume, Hudson explains:

After a poem of mine has been rejected a multitude of times under my real name, I put Yi-Fen’s name on it and send it out again ... As a strategy for ‘placing’ poems this has been quite successful ... The poem in question … was rejected under my real name forty times before I sent it out as Yi-Fen Chou (I keep detailed records). As Yi-Fen the poem was rejected nine times before Prairie Schooner took it. If indeed this is one of the best American poems of 2015, it took quite a bit of effort to get it into print, but I’m nothing if not persistent.

Hudson's experience publishing this poem in-and-of-itself tells us nothing, of course, about reverse racism in publishing. All it tells us is that opinions are diverse and that this particular poem struggled to find its audience. Had he submitted the same poem to the same outlet under different names and had it accepted under Chou but not Hudson, that would be more suggestive but still not proof (perhaps a different editor handled each submission?)

Nonetheless, the resulting outrage prompted the editor of the volume, Sherman Alexie, to write an explanation. The result was a very candid admission that affirmative action played a significant role in the poetry selection process. In Sherman's words:

I chose a strange and funny and rueful poem written by Yi-Fen Chou, which turns out to be a Chinese pseudonym used by a white male poet named Michael Derrick Hudson as a means of subverting what he believes to be a politically correct poetry business.  

I only learned that Yi-Fen Chou was a pseudonym used by a white man after I'd already picked the poem and Hudson promptly wrote to reveal himself.  

Of course, I was angry at the subterfuge and at myself for being fooled by this guy. I silently cursed him and wondered how I would deal with this colonial theft.  

So I went back and reread the poem to figure out exactly how I had been fooled and to consider my potential actions and reactions. And I realized that I hadn't been fooled by anything obvious. I'd been drawn to the poem because of its long list title (check my bibliography and you'll see how much I love long titles) and, yes, because of the poet's Chinese name. Of course, I am no expert on Chinese names so I'd only assumed the name was Chinese. As part of my mission to pay more attention to underrepresented poets and to writers I'd never read, I gave this particular poem a close reading. And I found it to be a compelling work. In rereading the poem, I still found it to be compelling. And most important, it didn't contain any overt or covert Chinese influences or identity. I hadn't been fooled by its "Chinese-ness" because it contained nothing that I recognized as being inherently Chinese or Asian. There could very well be allusions to Chinese culture that I don't see. But there was nothing in Yi-Fen Chou's public biography about actually being Chinese. In fact, by referencing Adam and Eve, Poseidon, the Roman Coliseum, and Jesus, I'd argue that the poem is inherently obsessed with European culture. When I first read it, I'd briefly wondered about the life story of a Chinese American poet who would be compelled to write a poem with such overt and affectionate European classical and Christian imagery, and I marveled at how interesting many of us are in our cross-cultural lives, and then I tossed the poem on the "maybe" pile that eventually became a "yes" pile.

Do you see what happened?  

I did exactly what that pseudonym-user feared other editors had done to him in the past: I paid more initial attention to his poem because of my perception and misperception of the poet's identity. Bluntly stated, I was more amenable to the poem because I thought the author was Chinese American.  

Here, I could offer you many examples of white nepotism inside the literary community. I could detail entire writing careers that have been one long series of handshakes and hugs among white friends and colleagues. I could list the white poets who have been selected by their white friends for each of the previous editions of Best American Poetry. But that would be just grandstanding. It's also grandstanding for me to accuse white folks of nepotism without offering any real evidence. This whole damn essay is grandstanding. 

So what's the real reason why I'm not naming names? It's because most white writers who benefit from white nepotism are good writers. That feels like a contradiction. But it's not.  

And, hey, guess what? In paying more initial attention to Yi-Fen Chou's poem, I was also practicing a form of nepotism. I am a brown-skinned poet who gave a better chance to another supposed brown-skinned poet because of our brownness.  

So, yes, of course, white poets have helped their white friends and colleagues because of nepotism. And, yes, of course, brown poets have helped their brown friends and colleagues because of nepotism. And, yes, because of nepotism, brown and white poets have crossed racial and cultural lines to help friends and colleagues.  

Nepotism is as common as oxygen.  

But, in putting Yi-Fen Chou in the "maybe" and "yes" piles, I did something amorphous. I helped a total stranger because of racial nepotism.  

I was practicing a form of literary justice that can look like injustice from a different angle. And vice versa.  

And, of course, I know many of you poets are pissed at me. I know many of you are screaming out a simple question: "Sherman, why did you keep that poetry colonist in the anthology even after you learned of his deception?"  

Listen, I was so angry that I stormed and cursed around the room. I felt like punching the wall.  

And, of course, there was no doubt that I would pull that fucking poem because of that deceitful pseudonym.  

But I realized that I would primarily be jettisoning the poem because of my own sense of embarrassment. I would have pulled it because I didn't want to hear people say, "Oh, look at the big Indian writer conned by the white guy." I would have dumped the poem because of my vanity.  

And I would have gotten away with it. I am a powerful literary figure and the pseudonym user is an unknown guy who has published maybe a dozen poems in his life. If I'd kicked him out of BAP 2015 then he might have tried to go public with that news.  

And he would have been vilified and ignored. And I would have been praised.  

Trust me, I would much rather be getting praised by you poets than receiving the vilification I am getting now.

But I had to keep that pseudonymous poem in the anthology because it would have been dishonest to do otherwise.  

If I'd pulled the poem then I would have been denying that I gave the poem special attention because of the poet's Chinese pseudonym.  

If I'd pulled the poem then I would have been denying that I was consciously and deliberately seeking to address past racial, cultural, social, and aesthetic injustices in the poetry world.  

And, yes, in keeping the poem, I am quite aware that I am also committing an injustice against poets of color, and against Chinese and Asian poets in particular.  

But I believe I would have committed a larger injustice by dumping the poem. I think I would have cast doubt on every poem I have chosen for BAP. It would have implied that I chose poems based only on identity.  

But that's not what happened. In the end, I chose each poem in the anthology because I love it. And to deny my love for any of them is to deny my love for all of them.

Frankly, I am surprised that Alexie felt the need to apologize at all. This is, I think, exactly how affirmative action is supposed to work. We should pay special attention to people who belong to groups that have been historically discriminated against in order to give them an opportunity that might otherwise be denied them. But having ensured that they receive an opportunity, we then proceed on the basis of merit and merit alone. If it turns out that the poem has merit, it should be published regardless of whether it received attention for affirmative action reasons, and whether or not those reasons were justly applied. In my opinion, everything worked out just the way it is supposed to.

As for the actions of the author, I am in two minds. On the one hand, misrepresenting yourself to obtain an advantage seems like something we should obviously condemn. On the other hand, affirmative action is intended to offset other disadvantages, and not to create new advantages of their own. If it is true that affirmative action is overcompensating for these disadvantages—and this case does not prove that it is—then perhaps it is time to scale back our affirmative action efforts?

As we have seen in earlier posts on this blog, many male authors are adopting female or gender neutral pseudonyms to obtain an perceived advantage (or remove a disadvantage) in publishing caused by the fact that more readers are women than men. At the same time, some women are reporting that they still find it easier to publish under a male pseudonym. If both men and women are equally unhappy, then perhaps the balance of affirmative action on the basis of gender is just right.