If the memoir sounds too outrageous to be true, it probably isn't. In the past week, two different memoirs have been outed as complete fabrications; in both cases, it amazes me that nobody was immediately suspicious of the far-fetched melodramas the authors attempted to sell.

Exhibit A: Misha Defonseca, six years old and alone, on a solo search for her Nazi-kidnapped mother and father in snowy WWII Europe, collapses from exhausten in the middle of the forest but is miraculously rescued and adopted by a pack of wolves. The story is beyond ludicrous; that it took ten years before the fabrication was revealed is, perhaps, even more amusing than the laughable obvious fiction of her tale. In fact, the woman, who claimed to be a Jewish victim of Nazi oppression, is the catholic daughter of a collaborator. What could possess someone to build a tale so outlandish is beyond me. I can understand, being six years old and orphaned, how a little girl could construct a fictional story around herself, but to keep up the charade, write a memoir, get a movie deal, and through it all stick to a story that apparently nobody ever questioned--- to bank upon the suffering of others, that's plain sick.

Just as foul is the second exhibit, the purported Margaret B. Jones, half white/half native american adopted drug dealer on the killing fields of South Central LA, a light-skinned Blood. "Ms. Seltzer told The Times last week, 'One of the first things I did once I started making drug money was to buy a burial plot.'"

Of course, as the New York Times says so blithely, "The problem is that none of it is true." The writer is actually Margaret Seltzer, who grew up in Sherman-fucking-Oaks, is white, and never had anything to do with the so-called gang life except, supposedly (and I think this is as believable as the tales she spun to begin with) stories she encounted while "working to reduce gang violence" and meeting "some gang members during a short stint she said she spent at 'Grant' high school" (apparently in SFV).

And what a cliche this woman is. How many white people claim to be half-native (and usually, half Navajo or half Cherokee) to gain some kind of authenticity among people of color? What is this obsession with native americans anyway? Further, this woman tries to justify her exploitation of real people who live through harrowing circumstances by saying "I thought it was my opportunity to put a voice to people who people don’t listen to." In effect, justifying her speaking-for by saying that nobody'd listen anyway.