Fake memoirs

You may have seen the recent headlines about Margaret B. Jones, the half white, half Native American author, who wrote an acclaimed memoir about her life in Los Angeles’ South Central neighborhood dealing drugs for the Bloods. Except… whoops… none of that is true. She actually grew up pretty well off in the suburbs and went to private school. Why do people write fake memoirs? Blake Eskin has spent some time looking at this phenomenon. He’s a journalist and author who wrote a book about one fake Holocaust memoir and just wrote an article for Slate magazine about another.