Nasdijj: What, me white man?

Award winning and zillion book-selling Navajo Indian writer Nasdijj has been exposed as a white man who used to write gay pornography. Nasdijj had passed himself off as a Navajo Indian, writing anonomously, who told one interviewer that as a Navajo Indian child he was, "hungry, raped, beaten, whipped, and forced at every opportunity to work in the fields."

The LA Weekly called attention to doubts about his ethnicity after interviews with scholars, Indian authors and his acquaintances and colleagues. Then, The News and Observer of Raleigh, N.C. reported that Nasdijj's social security number matched that of 56 year-old Timothy P. Barrus.

Barrus/Nasfijj, Navajo/white gay porn writer, has his own blog, http://www.nasdijj.typepad.com which has, well, one photo on it showing two guys having nooses adjusted around their necks with the post title: Deserving Death For Evil Deeds. Google's cache, however, contains some pretty wild and rambling stuff which Nasfdijj is apparently trying to make disappear. Content Alert!

Following the About Me link, we discover only that he calls himself Yinishye Nasdijj, is a "father. AIDS Activist" and his interests are "making art". The Editor & Publisher says that he wrote a long post yesterday in which, "Nasdijj did not acknowledge any wrongdoing . . ." I can't find that post, today. Oh, I see why. The Google cached page is from 13 January. Hmmmm.

He played the Frey card in an email to The News and Observer:

"The real scandals are racism, poverty, disease, AIDS, FAS [fetal alcohol syndrome], autism, a medical system that is a train wreck, an environment that can barely breathe, and a war that is a self-created nightmare," the e-mail said. "Journalists need to focus on the REAL problems."

What's with these publishers? Apparently they'll publish anything and make any sham autobiographer rich in the process, especially when the fiction-as-fact skewers life as we know it in these United States.

TAGS: Nasdijj, fiction