Nasdijj

Timothy Patrick Barrus, also known as Tim Barrus (born 1950), is an American author and social worker who is best known for having published three "memoirs" between 2000 and 2004 under the pseudonym Nasdijj, by which he presented himself as a Navajo. The books were critically acclaimed, and Nasdijj received several literary awards and recognition from major institutions.

In 2006, journalists revealed that Barrus had published the Nasdijj books under a fictional identity, and that the events depicted in all three were largely fiction. In the United States publishing world, Barrus' work is cited as an example of memoirs released under misleading pretenses. The deception was revealed in the same period as the James Frey scandal. Controversy arose over the portrayal of fictional accounts as memoirs, as well as authors presenting false personas. Native Americans strongly criticized Barrus for appropriating the historic suffering of their people. They criticized the publishing world for so readily accepting impostors.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Barrus had published numerous articles and several novels. He is credited by Jack Fritscher with coining the term "Leather Lit."

Early life and education Tim Barrus was born and grew up in Lansing, Michigan, where he attended public schools. His parents were European American: his father Maynard Barrus worked as a foreman at the power plant. His mother Jean Anne Steginga was of Scandinavian descent. He has a younger sister, Suzanne.

Work life Barrus was a "provocative associate editor" of Drummer Magazine for five issues (#117-122). An editorial by the publishers on his departure explained that they were impressed with the work that he had done, and regretted that "Justice Department persecution of publishers of erotica" had caused him to terminate the relationship. Jack Fritscher (editor in chief) described Barrus as "one of the best editors" the magazine had in the 1980s. Barrus subsequently worked as an editor at Knights Press, creating the LeatherLit Writers Series.

By his account in later interviews, Barrus moved into social work, serving "special-needs children in Florida, Apache kids in New Mexico, disabled adults in Michigan", and autistic children in San Francisco. which Barrus may have misread as Nasdijj.

Literary career as Barrus Barrus began publishing articles in the late 1970s, primarily for the gay leather magazine Drummer.

In connection with Anywhere, Anywhere, a novel about Americans in Vietnam during the war, Barrus said that he had been a Vietnam veteran. This account was disputed by people who knew him. Receiving widespread notice and praise, the collection was selected as a "Notable Book of the Year" by The New York Times, and sold 27,000 copies.

As Nasdijj, Barrus received widespread recognition as a writer on the Native American experience. His work was described as a compelling combination of poetry and prose. In the specialist Native American journal, Studies in American Indian Literatures (SAIL), Marijo Moore wrote,

Barrus published the following books under the name Nasdijj: The Blood Runs Like a River Through My Dreams (2000), The Boy and the Dog Are Sleeping (2003), and Geronimo's Bones: A Memoir of My Brother and Me (2004)

Published as non-fiction, each memoir recounted purported aspects of the author's life. The memoirs referred to his Navajo heritage, his self-destructive and abusive parents (a white father and Navajo mother), his unhappy childhood as a migrant worker, his dysfunctional relationships with other family members, and his growing up to become a nurturing father. As an adult, he adopted two children: one with fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) and a second who was HIV-positive. In the books, the children are unprotected; the author attacks white society for their plight.

Hoax controversy Interested in The Boy for its portrayal of fatherhood, in 2004 James Dowaliby, a former vice president for Paramount International Television Group, acquired the film rights from Nasdijj. By the end of 2004, he had approval from FilmFour of the United Kingdom to develop a feature-length adaptation. During the process, he began to suspect the book was fraudulent when an adviser identified numerous errors, including the portrayal of Navajo clans and kinship system. Feischer said that suspicions about Nasdijj had arisen with publication of his first book; Sherman Alexie, a respected author of the Spokane tribe, said that he had complained to Anton Mueller, Nasdijj's editor, that the author had plagiarized him and other Native Americans. Alexie also wrote to Houghton Mifflin, which published the first book but then dropped Nasdijj as an author. Dowaliby dropped his film project because of his belief that the work was false. News & Observer, a North Carolina newspaper that had published some of Nasdijj's work, confirmed that it had on file a social security number that matched that of Tim Barrus. Esquire magazine revealed that it had paid for a 1999 Nasdijj article with a check made out to "Tim Nasdijj Barrus".

In "Nasdijj Shops Tell-All", Fleischer noted these developments. He quoted an e-mail from Nasdijj to an editor at Penguin Books, in which the author offered a novel called Year of the Hyena: The Story of Nasdijj. The article presented excerpts from Nasdijj's blog with the headline, "Deserving Death for Evil Deeds, by Tim Barrus". It quoted, "What you want to believe you want to believe. If I am the devil incarnate then I am the devil incarnate." Subsequently, the host TypePad deleted Nasdijj's blog.

He had become suspicious of Nasdijj, finding that the author appeared to borrow from his and other Native American writings. The activist Suzan Shown Harjo (Muscogee Creek and Cheyenne) questioned why the publishing world was taken in by Native American impostors. (She has also been critical of Ward Churchill, who as a professor of ethnic studies claimed to be Native American and acts as a spokesman. Harjo and others have documented that he has no record of Native American ancestry. One journalist noted that "the convergence of all three scandals at once had the feel of a Triple Crown of hoaxery, with the grand losers being accuracy, truth, and literature itself."

Fleischer said that, writing under his pseudonym, Barrus had described the cost of such appropriation:

In May 2006, Esquire published the article "Nasdijj", for which the journalist Andrew Chaikivsky interviewed Barrus. Chaikivsky describes a man whose "shifting emotional temperature" veered between "meticulousness and careful good manners" and "a full roar." Barrus was quoted as saying, "I understand that a trust was violated. I'm not defending it." In the course of the interviews, Barrus spoke of knowing Robert Mapplethorpe, being encouraged to write by Tennessee Williams, and adopting a developmentally challenged child with his first wife during the mid-1970s. Chaikivsky said, "Over the three days I spend with Barrus, I don't believe much of what he tells me." The adoption was documented, as was Barrus and his wife returning the child to the state, which he said was because of the boy's severe problems caused by FAS.

In May 2007, Virginia Heffernan reported in the Screens blog of The New York Times that Barrus had "found a home on YouTube", where he was posting "Nuyorican beat-style stuff", which she described as "irritable, pretty, autodidactic, engrossing."