Consider the first line of this poem:
To? Or not to? William Shakespeare’s ???little cumslut???♂:
Do you think it’s any good? Is it as good as, say, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”
It is, in fact, a deliberately and carefully designed piece of awful and pointless “poetry” created by a man who calls himself Jasper Ceylon because he wanted to make a point.
He sent out several pieces of equally bad so-called poetry to various publications, using fake names such as “Adele Nwanko, a gender fluid member of the Nigerian diaspora”.
Many of them were published.
Another man, Michael Derrick Hudson, sent around a poem called “The Bees, the Flowers, Jesus, Ancient Tigers, Poseidon, Adam and Eve”. It was rejected forty times. Then he changed the name of the poet to Yi-Fen Chou, and it sold immediately.
Do I really need to explain this? Haven’t things gone way too far?
Not too long ago I had a conversation with a Young Adult editor who insisted that she would not even read something I wanted to send her, because it did not sound like it had enough diversity. I told her there was one gay character, but that wasn’t enough for her. It was a lovely and beautifully written story, but she refused to judge it on its merits. Merits?! Heaven forbid.
When did quality become usurped by rigid and extreme social trends? While of course there is a place for all voices and all voices should be considered, it has become necessary to feature ONLY diverse voices.
That means that most of the great classics would not be eligible in today’s market. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE? Forget it. It has homophobia and every single character is white. THE SUN ALSO RISES? Everyone is white and there is blatant antisemitism. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD? No way. There is nothing from Tom Robinson’s point of view. It is a white savior book. Well, it is a white savior book. So what? It is from one character’s point of view. So is HUCKLEBERRY FINN a white savior book, but then Percival Everett came along and gave us JAMES, which is a brilliant and important counterpart to Huck Finn’s story. There is a place for both. Should we ban OTHELLO and THE MERCHANT OF VENICE? And because of those plays, should we ban all of Shakespeare? Where will this end?
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