University of Texas El Paso

  

Reflection of Poetry Identity

Rhetorical Analysis of White Poet Who Used Chinese Pseudonym to Get Published

Sparks Debate

Devina Witherspoon

University of Texas at El Paso

Oct 8, 2015

 

     In today's society, it is hard enough for people having to migrate to another country to enable thenselves to support their families and make their lives better.  Sadly they are now having to deal with discrimination,   which makes it much harder to live a stress free life style.  In Jack Linshi’s article on 'Time' "White Poet Who Used Chinese Pseudonym to Get Published Sparks Debate'".  This article is motivated on a white poet who used a Chinese name “Yi-Fen Chou” to get his poem selected into The Best American Poetry.  However, this raised some accusations of racism and cultural appropriation  (Linshi, 2015).  The imaginative author Michael Derrick Hudson who wrote “The Bees, the Flowers, Jesus, Ancient Tigers, Poseidon, Adam and Eve” (Linshi, 2015).  That was the poem that rejected forty times by the Best American Poetry, an annual anthology, but after using a Chinese pen name it was again rejected nine times before it was seemingly selected, which made it to the final cut to be in the annual poetry collection of The Best American Poetry of 2015.

            Jack Linshi is a Time reporter; he is a recovering applied math major, and an award-winning yelper.  His qualification exceeds that of an author for an article like this one.  He interprets the message on why Michael Derrick Hudson used a pen name for a better chance to get his poem selected.  He identifies the audience of the article to be the “observers of poetry and Asian-American communities” (Linshi, 2015). 

Purpose

            The purpose of this article is identified author Michael Derrick Hudson to be racist and further express to the public about the wrong doing of using someone else’s name to gain benefit for themselves.  In addition, it is also to convince the poetry society and public on people of different race/ethnic background is capable of producing great poems.  With that in mind, that is the reason the white poet used a Chinese pen name to get his work published.  This assumes that people of different color would get recognized more preferably.  Jack Linshi’s goal in this article was to make the public aware of the racism against writers of a different ethnic background within the poetry society.  As Asian Americans we are already the victims of racism.  Furthermore, people of race and color are often excluded in many different events of the writer’s world.  Most of the time caucasian writers portray as a person of a different ethnic background to get notice.  This happens too often.  The article consists of all three elements: Ethos, Pathos and Logos. 

Ethos

            Relating to the white poet, “Michael Derrick Hudson of Indiana used the pen name Yi-Fen Chou after his poem was repeatedly rejected under his real name” (Linshi, 2015).  His creditability is not strong enough.  Therefore, he used a Chinese pen name, which belonged to his high school classmate.  She did not appreciate that her name was being used without her consent, which gears towards ethos.  In addition, issues relating to discrimination against Chinese Americans have always been a big problem.   The Chinese are referred to as “yellow face”, and they are looked at as lacking creditability in the poetry world because they are a minority group.  This article also relates to my community problem, again because it is focused on race issue, and how a white poet Michael Derrick Hudson have no regards for Chinese people.  He used a Chinese name to benefits himself and gets his poem published because his poem was rejected forty times prior to this incident.  Another example where ethos appears to be referring to Volume’s editor Sherman Alexie.  He claimed that he selected those poems to The Americas Best Poem because he consider them to be good poems.  But if they were good why did it take forty times plus a Chinese pen name to get selected? 

         

          Pathos is referring to the Chinese community’s feeling of being discriminated against.  Volume editor Sherman Alexie’s actions appeal to both ethos and pathos.  It appeals to ethos because even after knowing the truth about the identity of the author, Sherman Alexie did not remove the poem from The Best American Poetry, because that could led him to loose his creditability.

Pathos

            This article mostly gage towards pathos because Jack Linshi mentions the poems were submitted forty times and nine more times using a different pen name before it was chosen.  In referring to Volume’s editor Sherman Alexie, this also appeals to pathos because he tried to emphasize as to why he kept those poems on the Best American Poetry list even after knowing the truth about the identity of the author.  He states that if he removes the poem that he had selected it would “implied that he chose poems based only on identity” (Linshi, 2015). 

Logos

            One example of Linshi’s position is his comparison of the white writers vs. Chinese American writers.  This is an appeal to the readers of Logos because Linshi wants his readers to understand why people of different ethnic background are considered different. In addition, people with a different “ethnic identity traditionally are underrepresented in American literature” (Linshi, 2015).  Therefore, this would raise a lot of eyebrows because why would a white poet use a Chinese pseudonym to publish his poems? Another example is when Michael Derrick Hudson states “ I don’t always publish mediocre poems, but when I do I publish them as Yi-Fen Chou”. This quote clearly says a lot about the author’s racism out look on the Asian America community.

            After careful analysis, this article covers many aspects of Jack Linshi’s perspective on Michael Derrick Hudson.  His action of deceitfulness by using a Chinese pseudonym angered many Chinese Americans and Asian poets.  I realized discrimination has been around America for centuries and will continued to be around.  Ethos, pathos, and logos are used in this article to make one realize this.  As long as people see other people of different skin color or race differently, it will always be a problem for this society.  We must understand that God created everyone to be equal not who is better then who.

 

References

 

Linshi, J. (2015). White Poet Who Used Chinese Pseudonym to Get

          Published Sparks Debate, http://time.com/4025745/white-poet-  

          chinese-pseudonym-best-american-poetry/