Fake Memoirs

[lesbiassparrow]

Via cbackson, the story of a white, private school attending, valley girl who wrote a memoir of her years in the 'hood. Strongly based on that one time she totally drove through South Central and realized that there were poor people, yo!

Here's the entry in the NY Times that had her sister calling that paper to reveal the truth. But reading that one wonders how on earth they didn't work it out for themselves and how she conned the editors of her publishing house* for more than 5 minutes. I know that I have the advantage of knowing that this is a fake while reading it but it reads like a bunch of crap. Plus notice The Times' writer's desire to to point out on page 2 that although the author is white she has many pictures of black people which clearly proves something or other.

Ah, the rich: co-opting the stories of the poor since first mankind learned to make money by writing. And I am sure the fact that she was a photogenic white girl had nothing to do with the publisher's decision to publish. None at all.

Sample Quotes:

"Unlike several other recent gang memoirs, all written by men, Ms. Jones’s story is told from a nurturer’s point of view. Along with grit and blood, every chapter describes tenderness and love between people as well as the rites and details of domestic life."

"She came up with her down payment by cashing in Starbucks stock options, she said"

"A shelf above her desk holds an altar of family snapshots, with many more black faces than white."

*One suspects because they are likely to also be white and private school educated and thus have no idea of what the reality might be like. But you'd think then that they'd have the sense to check the story out. I bet you could google this and still come up with the truth.

Comments

[particle-person.livejournal.com]

We've been talking about the case in the Publishing Scandals thread on SF.
http://snarkphoenix.15.forumer.com/index.php?showtopic=1170&view=findpost&p=169250

[lesbiassparrow.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I didn't even know we had a publishing scandals thread...

[lage-nom-ai.livejournal.com]

Heee. I loved the headline that read something like "She's lucky Oprah hasn't found out"

[lesbiassparrow.livejournal.com]

Everything about this story makes everyone look very, very dumb. Which is what makes it entertaining in a way. Except for the bit about co-opting other people's misery to make a dollar which does make me see red.

[lage-nom-ai.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I have very little sympathy and very much "You're a DUMBASS" for the people at the publishing house who're claiming that they feel "shocked and betrayed."

Though I do love that the sister apparently had enough moral fiber to turn her in. I bet Christmas is gonna be a fun one this year!

[lesbiassparrow.livejournal.com]

Especially since they're the same publishing house who published Frey's 'memoir.'

I can't believe that she had the gumption to do a story in the NY Times and think that no one from her family or old friends might turn her in.

[queenofthorns.livejournal.com]

I also love that her editor is the daughter of a former editor at the Times. No wonder Michiko Kakutani gave the book such a glowing review >:|

[lesbiassparrow.livejournal.com]

I noticed that as well. And no wonder it got a huge story in the paper as well! (Though even without it being a fake that story would just be 50 types of wrong.)

[cbackson.livejournal.com]

What shocks me is that a bunch of the commenters on Jezebel think her sister was a "bitch" for turning her in.

REALLY?

[lesbiassparrow.livejournal.com]

You don't turn on lying family members! It's the first rule of the 'hood.

[cbackson.livejournal.com]

No, don't you know? EVEN YOUR MOMMA WILL SELL YOU OUT if she's embarrassed enough.

[lesbiassparrow.livejournal.com]

Not 'Big Mom'! She's totally giving me her recipes and her Starbucks stock.

[cbackson.livejournal.com]

Dude, I am whiter than rice*, and private-school educated and even I thought it sounded just...a little...FUCKING RIDICULOUS to me.

It was actually the bit in the Home and Garden section story where she talked about how she'll always be a Blood that gave me the *cough*bullshit*cough* reaction.

*erm, white rice. Well, I mean, I'm also whiter than other types of rice, but that wouldn't be so illustrative a comparison!

[lesbiassparrow.livejournal.com]

The whole piece sounded like what I (white, raised on a tiny island in Ireland) would invent for a gangland background. Complete with 'Big Mom' and my miraculous rescue to the University of Oregon. Somehow that doesn't strike me as a school where a lot of South Central kids end up.

[cbackson.livejournal.com]

I didn't know you were Irish! Where are you from? I spent a month in Monaghan in high school.

[lesbiassparrow.livejournal.com]

Donegal. We like to pride ourselves on being the windiest and coldest part of Ireland.

[lage-nom-ai.livejournal.com]

Heee. As Sarah Jones says, "vultures on our culture like white on brown rice..." Apt for this newest memoir scandal!

[cbackson.livejournal.com]

The white-person-coopting-POC-experience-for-faux-memoir genre is really developing, man. What depresses me is that the true voices of WASPs just won't get heard while everyone's pushing their faked "I was an Athabaskan child soldier" books. WE SUFFER, LIKE, A LOT OMG.

(But when I say "we", of course, I don't mean me, because I'm actually a half-Zimbabwean, half-Mongolian who spent twelve years in Saddam's prisons before joining the Latin Kings in LA.)

[lesbiassparrow.livejournal.com]

Truefax: I once heard a book reviewer on NPR celebrating an author for tackling the (according to them) rarely written about lives of upper middle class New York housewives and their pain and suffering.

[cbackson.livejournal.com]

OH JESUS.

I mean, some people have written beautifully about very ordinary lives, but so often books like that are horrifically self-indulgent. I mean, Mrs. Dalloway is actually the only example I can think of that ISN'T.

[lage-nom-ai.livejournal.com]

Hahahaha, I guess The Feminine Mystique doesn't cut it anymore?

[lesbiassparrow.livejournal.com]

Clearly not. Their pain needs more story-tellers! Legions of them!

[lage-nom-ai.livejournal.com]

Oh, please. I do believe that the trials of WASPdom was fortunate enough to have the best chronicle of all: "Sex and the City." And then it even got into the whole gang aspect with "Cashmere Mafia"!

As for me, the world is waiting with bated breath to hear of my trials as a HALF-INDIGENOUS WAIF who grew up FIGHTING POLAR BEARS in Churchill, Canada. Only to fall in with a POLAR BEAR GANG that started a turf war over by Greenland. Those German polar bears in their pansy-ass zoos don't know nothin' 'bout the streets.

[cbackson.livejournal.com]

What ever.
*shuffles*
CASHMERE MAFIA 4 LIFE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[lesbiassparrow.livejournal.com]

But nobody would have told their stories had she not tried to make money from their pain and misery spoken up! And she once went to a school that wasn't absolutely rich.

[nutmeg3.livejournal.com]

I'm so disgusted by the whole fake memoir thing. Just call it fiction, people. Novels do still sell. Of course, apparently Eat Pray Love is real, and I despise that, too.

[lesbiassparrow.livejournal.com]

It just annoys me so much. You that there are people out there with real stories to tell but would a publisher ever touch one of them? No! These twits would rather an improbable story spun by a liar.