Mar 07 2008
Friday Night Movie: Freedom Writers
So, here we go again. Another false memoir. The New York Times reports the following: is time the
In Love and Consequences, a critically acclaimed memoir published last week, Margaret B. Jones wrote about her life as a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child among gang-bangers, running drugs for the Bloods. The problem is that none of it is true.As I mentioned in the past, false memoirs upsets me because publishers will be reluctant to publish memoirs. In fact, someone I know just received a rejection from an agent indicating that he was will stay away from memoirs because of the recent events.
If you want a real-life story about struggling teens that make it, rent Freedom Writers. The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change inspired the movie. The book description is as follows:
As an idealistic twenty-three-year-old English teacher at Wilson High School in Long beach, California, Erin Gruwell confronted a room of “unteachable, at-risk” students. One day she intercepted a note with an ugly racial caricature, and angrily declared that this was precisely the sort of thing that led to the Holocaust—only to be met by uncomprehending looks. So she and her students, using the treasured books Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl and Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Sarajevo as their guides, undertook a life-changing, eye-opening, spirit-raising odyssey against intolerance and misunderstanding. They learned to see the parallels in these books to their own lives, recording their thoughts and feelings in diaries and dubbing themselves the “Freedom Writers” in homage to the civil rights activists “The Freedom Riders.” (Source)
Freedom Writers is a touching movie. Watch it.
This whole memoir thing pisses me off too. There was another one that was revealed last week as false, about a woman who was involved in running from the germans in WWII. The whole thing is fake. I don’t understand it. Why not just publish it as fiction????
I blogged about that one here: http://auriacortes.com/random-thought-stop-the-crazy-insanity/
At least James Frey wrote about his life - embellishing bits and pieces of A Million Little Pieces - but the new trend is now creating a whole new life.
Sickening.
I loved The Freedom Writers!! I need to make sure my daughter sees the movie!
The fake memoirs are really irritating!!
AURIA! Ye, that got me into the 70 Day Challenge–Sven is not helping me! Here was my question: My story is non-fiction, I’ve changed the names, but people will know who I’m talking about, how do I keep from being sued? What do writers do? Sven’s peeps just told me to get an atty., shouldn’t I send my story out to a publisher first? THEN if the want it, don’t THEY get an atty.? Every word I write is in court records and MY story, MY experience, MY observations. HELP! Diane feels lonely here.
Diane, I believe this is how it works: you write the story, send it to a publisher and when it gets picked up an attorney for the publisher will vet the book.
The important thing right now is to get the story written. Everything else will fall into place.
Thank you! That’s what I thought. (hoped)
False memoirs get picked up because they’re sensational and will sell and sales trump almost everything else it seems.
I’m writing a memoir and the lies that get picked up make it difficult for those of us who stick to the truth.