Woman’s Memoir of Ghetto Childhood ("Love and Consequences") Fake

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Woman’s Memoir of Ghetto Childhood Fake
By Jane Ivory
11:13, March 4th 2008

http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_Womans_Memoir_of_Ghetto_Childhood_Fake_14740.html



The story within the pages of “Love and Consequences,” a Riverhead Books memoir written by a white woman claiming to have survived a dangerous life in a Los Angeles ghetto, has been exposed as a total fabrication.

Margaret Seltzer published a book with Penguin Group USA imprint Riverhead Books under the literary pseudonym of Margaret B. Jones; “Love and Consequences” was released last week and a book tour was to begin Monday but things are no longer going according to plan.

The New York Times exposed Seltzer as a fraud on Monday, after her older sister contacted the paper with a version of reality very much different from what Seltzer recounts in her book.

The woman, who is white, tells how she was raised in poverty by a black foster mother called Big Mom in South-Central Los Angeles. She defines herself in the memoir as a half-white, half-Native American girl and describes perilous activities she was involved in, such as selling drugs for a gang and carrying illegal guns. She also confesses one of her foster brothers was gunned down by Crips gang members outside their home.

[Dr. Strange]

1. Announcing this year's winner...

of the Rigoberta Menchú award for literature...

[momophile]

5. ouch. nt

[raccoon]

2. Thanks for the heads up. nt

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. Her story always did seem a bit "out there" to me

I assumed that she had exaggerated some of the details, but I'm really not surprised that she made the whole story up.

[skygazer]

4. Seems to be a lot of that going around

Why don't these people just write fiction? It's not like its that difficult to discover if their story is true or not. Morans.

[pitohui]

7. see post #4, they really have no choice in this market

they ARE writing fiction but publishers won't buy fiction from unknowns so there is the polite lie of the "memoir"

[pitohui]

6. most memoirs if not virtually all of them are fiction

it's the nature of the publishing industry, since there is no longer a path for fiction writers to break in, the only way to sell your novel is to package it as a "true story"

i don't esp. blame fiction writers for doing what they have to do in order to eat and tell their story

it's the nature of the industry where you can't get read by a publisher and these days you can't even get read by an agent without spending a great deal of money


decades ago there was a "slush" pile where an unknown writer could be discovered and have some hope of selling a novel even tho she hadn't slept with the right person or had the right father, those days are very much gone, and for various legal and financial reasons "slush" is not read

your only chance is to invest a lot of money in getting into workshops and the more respected programs -- which some writers who are writers rather than scholars or publicists or networkers or sales people just can't do, or they can't afford to spend the years needed to go this route -- or else you just have to lie and get in via the nonfiction "it's a true story" route

a novel is by definition a very well told fabrication, and i see no real ethical reason why a novelist shouldn't label her novel a "memoir" if that's the only way to get her story told, as far as i'm concerned, it's let the buyer beware -- publishers have created this market to their own benefit and the detriment of aspiring writers and if they are so naive as to believe these tall tales are true, well, too bad so sad!

most readers are savvy and know that "memoirs" are entertainment

[quadriga]

8. Did she choose the name 'Jones'

Because she thought it sounded "more black"? If she did, then she can add the term racist along side the term fraud in her resume.