Love and Consequences, the critically praised memoir by Margaret B. Jones, is the latest in a string of well-publicized books, to be proven fraudulent.
It started with James Frey's Oprah-endorsed bestseller A Million Little Pieces. Then, just last week, Misha Defonseca's purported Holocaust themed Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years, was revealed to be a fraud. Now, critically praised and poised to be future bestseller Love and Consequences by Margaret B. Jones has been ousted as a work of fiction.
The Story
Originally, Love and Consequences was touted as a memoir written by a bi-racial (half-Caucasian, half-Native American) young women that chronicles her upbringing in the foster care system and her subsequent inclusion in the infamous Bloods gang. The book was also alleged to recount her relationship with her two foster brothers, her relationships with other gang members and her survival.
The book is rich in details, such as Jones' initiation into the Bloods, her experience cooking crack-cocaine and receiving her first gun at the tender age of thirteen, which lends a degree of credibility to her tale. She is able, against all odds, to prosper, attending college and leaving her gangster lifestyle behind. One genuinely wants to believe, despite all of these atrocities, that if Jones is able to succeed there is hope for anyone who struggled through similar ordeals.
The Reality
It had been praised by media darlings, the likes of which included O Magazine, The New York Times and Entertainment Weekly, not to mention that it gained notoriety when it became the 28th best selling memoir on Amazon.com following its initial release on February 28, 2008. By all accounts, Love and Consequences was easily on its way to becoming a number one best seller. That was until reports began to surface that Jones' tale was a work of fiction, comprised of second-person accounts of gang life in South Central Los Angeles.
Jones, which is actually a pen name for Margaret Seltzer, was ousted when her sister saw the article about her in The New York Times and contacted Jones' publisher. Evidentially everything in the memoir, from her heritage to her gang associations, was fabricated. Jones claimed that she wrote the book to give "a voice to people who people don’t listen to" according to a New York Times article.
Drawing the Line Between Memoir and Fiction
Unfortunately, without thorough fact checking, it can sometimes be impossible to differentiate between a work of fiction and a genuine memoir. While a memoir is defined by Mirriam-Webster as "a narrative composed from personal experience" there is a grey area that allows for a large degree of personal interpretation on what actually constitutes personal experience.
For instance, when Oprah asked James Frey's editor, Nan Talese, if she considered Frey's book to be an authentic memoir, Talese answered, "a memoir is different from an autobiography. A memoir is an author's remembrance of a certain period in his life."
In the case of Misha Defonseca and her book, in a statement that she made through her lawyer regarding the factuality of her story, she claims that "there are times when I find it difficult to differentiate between reality and my inner world, the story in the book is mine. It is not the actual reality - it was my reality, my way of surviving."
What makes these situations even more baffling is that these books could have been just as compelling had they been marketed as fiction novels. If these examples are any indication, book publishers are sure to be more cautious with the handling of future "memoirs".
