Truthiness: Faux Memoires
by Van
Four copies of Love and Consequences: a Memoir of Hope and Survival by Margaret B. Jones made it into the collection before the publisher’s recall got them. The author detailed her life growing up as a foster child with Big Mom in the LA ghetto, running drugs. Kirkus Reviews praised the “hardened voice of experience, steely and honest.” Library Journal thought “this conversationally written, exquisitely detailed book is as close to a living experience of the American ghetto as one can get.”
Her real-life sister called the publisher when she found out about the book. Margaret B. Jones was not a foster child, not part American Indian, and did not run drugs for a gang. Margaret Seltzer is actually all white, raised by her natural parents, and went to an Episcopal high school in North Hollywood.
There are eight holds on the library’s copies. We will recatalog the book as Fiction once the holds list has been exhausted.
The library does not own the other fictional memoir in the news this week. Misha: a Memoire of the Holocaust Years, by Misha Defonseca, has been translated into eighteen languages and made into a movie. Misha Defonseca (Monique De Wael) turns out not to be Jewish, not to have been trapped in the Warsaw ghetto, not adopted by wolves, and did not kill a German soldier in self-defense. Her parents were murdered by the Nazis. If you would like to read a memoir of the Holocaust, the library has many excellent choices.
Blog Post
Comments
Hmm, do you think that just
Hmm, do you think that just because the book is fictitious, it loses some literary value?
I was curious how the
I was curious how the library would proceed because I just read about this author today. I appreciate the information. As far as whether it loses literary value, as a reader it changes how we frame the perspective of the writer. Calling it a memoir when it isn't would make me feel duped as a reader. Not that it would be less interesting if it was deemed 'fiction', just more honest.