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They Pretend To Be Us While Pretending We Don T Exist Analysis

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In her article, “They Pretend to Be Us While Pretending We Don’t Exist,” Jenny Zhang discusses poet Michael Derrick Hudson’s use of a Chinese pen name in order to get published, a choice which he defends by saying that taking on a minority’s identity helped him get the “edge” he needed, but is really an act of appropriation. Zhang uses this particular instance and a few others to bring attention to racism both in the writing world and society itself. By falsely identifying as a minority, white writers think publishers will be more interested in their work to add diversity to a company; however, being an actual minority or person of color in the writing world makes it more difficult to get published and even more difficult to be sure of the

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