Impostors: Literary Hoaxes And Cultural Authenticity

Description

Writing a new page in the surprisingly long history of literary deceit, Impostors examines a series of literary hoaxes, deceptions that involved flagrant acts of cultural appropriation. This book looks at authors who posed as people they were not, in order to claim a different ethnic, class, or other identity. These writers were, in other words, literary usurpers and appropriators who trafficked in what Christopher L. Miller terms the “intercultural hoax.” Contents......Page 8 Preface......Page 10 Acknowledgments......Page 12 Introduction......Page 14 Slave Narratives and White Lies......Page 34 The Forrest and the Tree......Page 35 Danny Santiago and the Ethics of Ethnicity......Page 38 Go Ask Amazon......Page 42 “I Never Saw It As a Hoax”: JT LeRoy......Page 46 Margaret B. Jones, Misha Defonseca, and “Stolen Suffering”......Page 51 Minority Literature and Postcolonial Theory......Page 55 What Is a (French) Author?......Page 58 The French Paradox and the Francophone Problem......Page 61 The Real, the Romantic, and the Fake in the Nineteenth Century......Page 64 The Single-Use Hoax: Diderot’s La Religieuse......Page 67 Mérimée’s Illyrical Illusions......Page 72 Bakary Diallo: Fausse-Bonté......Page 87 Elissa Rhaïs, Literacy, and Identity......Page 90 Sex and Temperament in Postwar Hoaxing: Boris Vian and Raymond Queneau......Page 94 Did Camara Lie? Two African Classics Between Canonicity and Oblivion......Page 103 Gary/Ajar: The Hoaxing of the Goncourt Prize and the Making-Cute of the Immigrant......Page 117 Who Is Chimo? Sex, Lies, and Death in the Banlieue......Page 133 Conclusion to Part 2......Page 137 Introduction......Page 138 Before “Paul Smaïl”......Page 142 Vivre me tue (Living Kills Me, or Smile)......Page 149 The Popular Press Reads Vivre me tue......Page 160 Smaïl Speaks (by Fax)......Page 165 The Leak......Page 167 Did “Hundreds” of Readers Write to Paul Smaïl?......Page 170 Truth and Lies à la Léger......Page 174 The Scholars Weigh In......Page 175 Azouz Begag’s Outrage and the Right to Write......Page 180 Reading: A Choice?......Page 185 The Parts He Played......Page 188 Conclusion......Page 192 Notes......Page 196 Index......Page 246