“The Pressure to Cover” is about how people feel pressured to cover (or, hide) their differences in order to receive better treatment. “When White Poets Pretend to Be Asian” is about a white poet who pretended to be someone else in order to get a poem accepted. According to Kenji Yoshino, “The new civil rights begins with the observation that everyone covers” (7). Yoshino also says that “the law will play a relatively small part in the new civil rights” (9). How should the art world change, in order to accommodate the new civil rights that Yoshino envisions?
Some questions for brainstorming:
Was Michael Derrick Hudson covering, when he pretended to be of a different ethnic background? How so? Why did he feel pressure to cover? Does something about the demands on poets need to change?
When Sherman Alexie said that he valued “The Bees” for its cross-cultural elements, was he actually valuing assimilation? Why or why not?