White author writes fake memoir of growing up in South L.A.

The story was riveting–a half-white, half-Native American  former foster child grows up in South Central L.A., writes a gritty  memoir that captures a world of drug dealing and gang rivalries,  poverty, and despair.
But it turns out that the author, Margaret B.  Jones, is actually Margaret Seltzer, a white, private-school-educated  33-year-old who gives a fictionalized account of growing up in South  L.A. and whose book has caused a furor of controversy.
The book,  entitled Love and Consequences: A Memoir of Hope and Survival,  chronicles the life of Margaret Jones, who moves to South Los Angeles at  the age of eight. There, she is raised by Big Mom, a big, kindhearted  black foster parent who loves Jones as if she were her own child.  Jones  eventually gets mixed up with a notorious gang, for whom she acts as a  screener for neighborhood residents seeking to buy drugs.
The  book, which received glowing reviews from The New York Times, was  recalled by Penguin Books after Seltzers sister broke the news that the  memoir was a fake.
On Thursday, Earl Ofari Hutchinson of the Los  Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable and Eddie Jones, president of the Los  Angeles Civil Rights Association, held a press conference at Eso Won  Books to denounce the fake memoir.
There needs to be a code of  ethics in this (book) industry so that they scrutinize the facts, said  Hutchinson.  Im sending a letter to the president of Penguin Books.   When authors write about black and Latino life, they have to make sure  it is not a lie or a distortion.
I am really appalled by this book  , declared Jones, who said he grew up in South Los Angeles. This  author said she worked for the Bloods and the Crips but all she did was  exploit our community for money.  … Where are the people she depicted  in the book? he queried.
Hutchinson and Jones were equally as  incensed that the book depicts negative images about blacks in South Los  Angeles. These white writers come in and write novels of gang and  urban life, Hutchinson said.  They lie, distort, and stereotype and  all it does is reinforce the negative images of young black males. They  pimp our lives, said Hutchinson.
The story has no validity.  When  you look at the young men in the community, they are just as hungry to  be productive. There are a lot of great things that African Americans  have contributed to this community, said Jones.
James Fugate,  co-owner of Eso Won Books, said that Seltzer was supposed to appear at a  book signing at Eso Won Friday but that the signing was canceled.  We  just pulled the book off the shelves, said Fugate, who said he sent  Love and Consequences back to the publisher.  I talked to the  publishers at Penguin and they are very unhappy.  They said they were  deceived by Seltzer. They offered to compensate us for any publicity we  had done.
It seemed as if it would have been very easy for the  publishers to fact-check her story, even though Big Mom is supposed to  be dead.  In light of all the books that have been written and turned  out to be fakes in the last few years, it seemed that checking these  novels out first would save the publishers a lot of embarrassment, said  Fugate.
Pausing, Fugate said that the book follows a trend in urban  literature that is growing in popularity. Its unfortunate, but for me,  its one of those books that I dont care very much for anyway, but we  sell them. People want to read them and thats their right. I said to my  customers, If we only carried the books I liked, we would not have  very many books in Eso Won.
Jones said that the growing trend in  urban fiction in the last few years, is sending the wrong message to  young African Americans. Our people are buying gold and bling bling and  riding around on 24-inch rims.  We are sending a fake message to our  youth. We have to let our youth know that life is not like a microwave.  You have to have a plan.