WHITE WOMAN'S GANG MEMOIR IS BOGUS

Dang, talk about perpetrating! Margaret B. Jones, a white woman, got away with writing a memoir that claimed she was raised in poverty by a black foster mother and sold drugs for a gang in South-Central LA.

Also, according to the New York Times, her name isn't even Margaret B. Jones. It's really Margaret Seltzer.


In "Love and Consequences" - published last week by Penguin Group USA's Riverhead Books - Jones writes about growing up as a half-white, half-Native American girl in the foster home of Big Mom. One of her foster brothers, she writes, was gunned down by Crips gang members outside their home.


She also made up a story involving carrying illegal guns and selling drugs for the Bloods gang.


Unfortunately for Jones, her make-believe world came crashing down after her sister, Cyndi Hoffman, saw an article in The New York Times about her and contacted Riverhead, the Times says.


The publisher has recalled all copies of the book and has canceled Jones' book tour, which was to have begun on Monday. The Times says that Hoffman noted that some basic fact checking by Riverhead would have prevented the embarrassing situation from happening.


The fact is Margaret Seltzer, AKA Margaret B. Jones, is white and grew up in the well-off Sherman Oaks area in the San Fernando Valley with her biological family.


Jones, 33, admitted to the Times that her memoir was a complete fabrication. Many of the experiences recounted in the book, she told the newspaper, were based on the experiences of friends she had met while doing anti-gang outreach in Los Angeles.


"For whatever reason, I was really torn, and I thought it was my opportunity to put a voice to people who people don't listen to," she told the paper.


An editor at Riverhead, in an interview with the Times, described the discovery as "upsetting" and as a "huge personal and professional betrayal." The editor, Sarah McGrath, said she had numerous conversations with the writer about telling the truth.


"I've been talking to her on the phone and getting e-mails from her for three years, and her story never has changed," McGrath told the Times. "All the details have been the same. There never have been any cracks."


Meanwhile, "Love and Consequences" has drawn nice reviews from critics. Los Angeles Times book reviewer Susan Salter Reynolds cited Jones' "loyalty to the language, the sense of community, the tight bonds she formed with her gang."