How a white guy got his poem published by changing his name to Yi-Fen Chou

From Hot Air:

A rather strange tale comes across the transom to us today from the rough and tumble world of competitive poetry publishing. (Okay… I confess. I really just wanted to type that sentence.) But putting all snark aside, the Washington Post’s Sarah Kaplan did come up with a rather enlightening news item about the annual publication of the anthology, Best American Poetry.

No! Wait! Come back! I promise, the story gets better.

There is one beleaguered individual, Sherman Alexie, who is responsible for reading thousands of submissions each year and determining which bits of verse should make it into the august publication. This year he was perusing all of the hopefuls when he came across one with the rather odd sounding title, The Bees, the Flowers, Jesus, Ancient Tigers, Poseidon, Adam and Eve. I don’t know why that would jump out and catch anyone’s eye, but then I’m not that kind of writer. (Ahem.) The poem was authored by someone named Yi-Fen Chou and – long story short – it was included in the anthology.

That’s where things begin to get weird.
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What all of this said to me, though, is that the liberal arts community really is just as much of a mess outside the world of politics as it is in the areas where it intersects with our realm. A free market conservative might ask why the poem doesn’t stand on its own merits no matter what the demographic profile of the author. It’s either good or it’s not, right? Not so in the liberal arts world. The guy couldn’t get the time of day out of publishers when he sounded too white. But when he suddenly became “ethnic” in the mind of the reviewer, he was a hit.

Reality smacks the liberal right between the eyes.