The usually placid world of American poetry, not rocked much since the beatnik generation, has exploded in a debate involving racial privilege after it was revealed that a Caucasian poet had his work included – after picking the Chinese pen-name Yi-Fen Chou.
Michael Derrick Hudson, of Indiana, finally secured a coveted place in the Best American Poetry anthology of 2015, after struggling to get his poem (The Bees, the Flowers, Jesus, Ancient Tigers, Poseidon, Adam & Eve) published under his own name. After the work was rejected, according to the poet, 40 times, he opted for the nom de plume, settling on the Asian name Yi-Fen Chou.
As Chou, the poem was rejected nine times, before finally being accepted into the prestigious collection, even after he told the anthology’s editors his true identity.
“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,” writes Hudson in the collection.
His persistence has, however, not been well met by American literary critics; Brian Spears, a poet and the poetry editor of the cultural website The Rumpus.net, referred to Hudson’s actions as a poetry ‘yellowface’, writing that straight white men remain the driving force and recognised standard in writing.
“If you’re a straight white male, to adopt the name of a marginalized minority is crass and offensive,” Spears writes. “To do so and think it gives you an advantage in publishing is stupid and insulting to the editors who are mostly doing this work for nothing or for very little pay.
2015’s Best American Poetry editor Sherman Alexie, a National Book Award-winner and poet of Native-American ancestry, defended his decision to include the poem in the anthology. Writing on the poetry collection’s blog, Alexie admits he was initially angry at Hudson’s “colonial theft,” but that leaving the poem out would have been a bigger injustice.
Reading the poem knowing the poet’s real identity, Alexie says that his decision to include it was not clouded by any “overt or covert Chinese influences” in it.
“I hadn’t been fooled by its ‘Chinese-ness’ because it contained nothing that I recognised as being inherently Chinese or Asian,” Alexie writes.
