Three straight white guys walk into a poetry reading …

I was on Facebook one day when I happened to see an event schedule for the super-woke nonprofit Literary Arts Bookstore we have here in Portland.

I looked through the store’s calendar. Most of the events were what you would expect: a young woman presenting her trauma memoir, a BIPOC reading night, a Chinese woman’s immigration story, a female brain surgeon’s journey through the sexist medical field …

All three of them knew exactly what they were allowed to write about. And they stayed inside those bounds.

Then I saw something strange. It was an event that featured three young white guys.

You don’t see a lot of literary readings by white guys in Portland. Or anywhere else. We’ve been at a low ebb of white guys in any