Margaret “Peggy” Seltzer (1975- ), an American writer, is best known as Margaret B. Jones, author of “Love and Consequences” (2008). It tells of her growing up in the 1980s as a half-white, half-Native-American foster child in the middle of South Central, a black ghetto of Los Angeles.
She got a gun for her 13th birthday. She first sold crack to pay the water bill. She ran drugs. One foster brother was sent to prison, the other was gunned down in front of the house. She was part of a gang, the Bloods. She got a scholarship to the University of Oregon and graduated.
It was all made up.
Seltzer grew up with both birth parents, both white, in Sherman Oaks, a well-to-do white part of Los Angeles on the other side of town, in the Land of the Valley Girls. She went to the same private school as Hollywood’s Olsen twins. She did go to the University of Oregon but failed to graduate.
Seltzer did not just come up with a character for a book – she lived as that character!
She fooled the New York Times. She fooled Michel Martin at NPR. She fooled her agent. She fooled her publisher. She fooled her editor. She fooled her friends. She fooled a long-time pastor of South Central. She fooled a gang member of the Bloods.
Even in 2006, when James Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces” (2003) was discovered to be a lie, her editor never called L.A. child services, never called the University of Oregon, to check simple facts.
But there was one person she could not fool: her sister.
Days after the book went on sale, her sister outed her. Seltzer then said the book was based on stories of people she knew. Then she dropped out of sight.
Naomi Zack, a professor at the University of Oregon:
For so long there are people who haven’t had voices, who couldn’t get their work in print, who couldn’t talk about themselves, and for a white privileged woman to speak in the voice of this group is very insulting.
Seltzer claiming to be half Native American was no accident. America has a long history of fake Indian writers. She was one of them. Her stuff never saw print but Gordon Sayre of the University of Oregon, in his book “Indian Chief as Tragic Hero” (2005), says:
Peggy Seltzer of the Quinault nation alerted me to the annual ride of the Sioux and inspired my teaching of Native American literature at Oregon.
In the 1990s she claimed she was from the Quinault Indian reservation in Washington state. She wrote stories and poetry about it. She talked about Indians so much that customers at the Starbucks she worked at complained.
Back then she was a green anarchist working to save the old trees of Oregon from being cut down – and to free Jeff Luers.
She was also perfecting a South Central accent – and then dropped out of sight.
Sources: Elle: My So-Called Life, Kevin Allman: Writing about writing: Ethics
See also:
It makes you wonder just what is real and what’s made up these days (or those days)…:/
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@ ch555x
And many people still believe her stories to be true
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Well, I guess she made her little “start up” money for whatever scheme she had going next. Can’t say I’m mad, though. Nice con job.
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She has forever earned her place in the literary hall of shame like Norma Khouri.
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Interesting. This is news to me. I guess there was some appeal to her “pulling up herself by her bootstraps” despite the misfortune of being raised by a black family.
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😀 and this happned in this day and age? This also speaks in volumes about the ability fo the americans to believe in any make believe. Anybody, and I mean anybody, could have checked her out with a one phone call or google. The point is, no one wanted to do that. They wanted to believe this doo doo. Duh!
There is something very very strange going on in US of A. More and more whites are inventing identities with natives, I even heard of a whole tribe (not real) some guy made up for himself. But I guess she was too white to claim to be half black also, which would have made her story even more fantastic.
I just wonder what this tells about the preset state of the country, what is going on over there…
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That was really funny. She made sure she touched on all the frightening “ghetto” stereotypes and white phobias while surviving no hot water at Big Mom’s house, joining the Bloods, getting raped by Crips and cooking crack…I can’t stop laughing and my sides still hurt. I can’t get the image of her as the Lawrence of Arabia of South Central out of my head. Ow!…my sides…
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Just a sick pathological liar, Glad she was found out to be such.
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“She made sure she touched on all the frightening “ghetto” stereotypes and white phobias….”
Yeah, and apparently some of their sexual fantasies too:
“…getting raped by Crips….”
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Damn. She did not age well.
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@ Ankhesen Mié:
I thought that as well. She’s, what, thirty-seven? I’d say forty-seven is more like it. And her own sister outed her? I guess they weren’t tight.
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@ Sam
When I googled “Quinault Indians” I was half-expecting to find out that that was made up too.
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@abagond:
😀 I forgot the name of the invented tribe, otherwise I would have named here. Back in the 80’s-90’s there was a bunch of white canadians and french over here who claimed to be natives of somekind and lo behold, the alternative folks and greens were head over heels when their chief told to press that they are seeking a new home land here, in the wild.
Then some guys noticed that these indians did not know how to dress for the cold weather (they used warmed stones to warm their hands etc. really! I am not making this up!!!) nor they knew too much about the life in the wild (which they claimed to be experts in, as are all natives naturally). Actually they were totally dependent of the help of their local friends and support system. And they were not happy when they were shown a place to live in a distant region in the middle of the forests far away from any town.
Eventually some one checked their backround and yes, there was no such tribe at all. They explained that evil white men did not recognise them. Then they were asked why other natives do not recognise them. Well, they are half breeds so the other natives are racist against them or something. Soon they were no longer native americans nor indians at all, but LIFESTYLE indians. 😀 I am not making this up, this really happened!
Eventually they just took off and dissappeared but I have no doubt that the “chief” and his closest “tribes men” are somewhere right now doing the same thing and some white folks are drooling all over their stories.
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Here they are:
(http://yle.fi/elavaarkisto/artikkelit/outo_joukko_intiaaneja_leiriytyi_suomeen_46782.html#media=46788)
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It seems the guy formed his first “tribe” in early 70’s and majority of these “indians” were actually from France and Belgium.
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Asian American writer Marie Myung-Ok Lee:
and:
Source:
http://www.bookslut.com/features/2008_04_012649.php
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Found her on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVxs5t2wyzs
She never mentions women, She’s speaking from the male point of view. Girls don’t get asked what gang they are in. Can’t see her being the lone white girl in a Black male gang (without her being passed around or pimped out)therefore I suspect she stitched together a lot of pumped-up braggadocio during pillow talk with various Black men she met out night-clubbing in the Valley. Also the area is called South Los Angeles or South LA and hasn’t been referred to as South-Central by the residents (nor the media, for that matter) in a long time…maybe before the interview she watched the movie Colors…
“I’m a nightmare walkin’/Psychopath talkin’/ King of my jungle, just a gangster stalkin'”
I read also that she had talked to kids who were Black Panthers…now that was funny. There are a lot of gullible people and she is a good liar. She was a fake Native American (and a good one), a fake “Tree Hugger” (and a good one), a fake gangbanger (and a good one) so maybe she’s just a method actor practicing her craft. Who knows? But that people really believed that??? HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
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Abagond:
Guilt rising up from the bottom…the guilty party lumping themselves in with the victims of their wrath. If she’s so concerned about native-americans and blacks, she should encourage her fellow white sisters and brothers to acknowledge the ugly truth of what was done to both groups. As long as whites run away from the wickedness of their forefathers, they’re never gonna have peace of mind on this planet.
Tyrone
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She is mentally ill.
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2 POINTS.
1. Sadly, the nature of the publishing world is designed to allow this. It’s difficult to get published if you’re not “exceptional.” Many people lie.
2. I see this woman no differently than I see “rapper” Drake. (Abagond, please do a post on Drake). Drake was raised with his Jewish mother in the Richmond Hill suburbs of Toronto. He was a child star. Suddenly, 3-yrs-ago be came a rapper, and now speaks with a FAKE, pseudo-Ebonics accent. It’s disingenuous.
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@ Mel
Drake – what a wonderful suggestion!! Thanks.
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