Word: memoirize
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...Native American writer, born fragile and poor on a destitute Indian reservation, published an essay, "The Blood Runs like a River Through My Dreams," in Esquire. It earned a National Magazine Award nomination and was later expanded into a memoir of the same title that became a finalist for a PEN/Martha Albrand Award. That rez-to-riches tale of courage and redemption sounds like a Horatio Alger story, doesn't it? It should be a movie. Or at least an episode of A&E's Biography. Of course, I'm biased, because, well, it's my story. Kind...
Nasdijj, the one-name author of The Blood Runs like a River Through My Dreams, claimed to be the son of a Navajo mother and a white father. His memoir features a child named Tommy Nothing Fancy who suffers from and dies of a seizure disorder. Quite the coincidence, don't you think...
...Weekly believes that Nasdijj is a fraud and actually a white writer named Timothy Barrus? Vindicated? Well, sure. I dream of leaving "I told you so" messages on many voice mails, although unlike James Frey's publisher, who initially supported his lies and moral evasions about his exaggerated memoir, A Million Little Pieces, Nasdijj's publisher dropped him because of personality conflicts even before the L.A. Weekly story came out. Of course, Frey has sold millions of books and will probably sell a few million more. Nasdijj hasn't sold millions of books, and he will probably fade into obscurity...
...generations of very real Indians because of very real injustices caused by very real American aggression that destroyed very real tribes. He isn't the first to do it. In 1991 the American Booksellers Association gave its book-of-the-year award to Forrest Carter's Cherokee-themed memoir, The Education of Little Tree, despite the documented fact that Carter was really Asa Carter, a rabid segregationist and the author of George Wallace's infamous war cry, "Segregation today! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever...
...only hope that Nasdijj's readers will look to Oprah for inspiration. After initially defending the essential truth of Frey's memoir, a selection for her book club, Oprah changed her mind, admitted that she had been duped, invited Frey back onto her show and called him a liar. When was the last time a public figure like Oprah admitted to being wrong? When was the last time a powerful person like Oprah issued a genuine public apology? I think all the people who profited from Nasdijj's fraud should take heed of that lesson and issue public apologies...