I don't think I've had a conversation with anyone in the past week who has not had a take, a thoughtful, impassioned take, on recent news of a sheltered white woman passing off her counterfeit story of life as a gang-banging foster child in South Central L.A.

How does this continue to happen? How does an editor or publisher fail to vet a manuscript for truth?

As a journalist for more than 35 years, a novelist for 20 and as a new publisher concentrating in African-American literature, these are questions I have discussed, considered and struggled with for some time.

How is the reading public to trust us as storytellers, historical and cultural documenters, reporters and opinion-shapers if we, the publishing industry, continue to appear unable to distinguish between fact and fiction, truth and mendacity?

Aren't we the ones who have held ourselves up as keepers of the truth? Are we taking our responsibilities seriously enough? These are questions that must be discussed and examined and eventually answered if we are to continue to deserve the trust of our readers.

For a public facing the shrinking and elimination of conventional venues of reliable information such as daily newspapers, Sunday magazine sections and talk shows of substance, the recurring revelations of fake memoirs leave us all vulnerable to lies. What are readers to believe? And will they continue to believe?

When I first read the generally glowing reviews of "Love and Consequences" by Margaret B. Jones and a follow-up lifestyle article in The New York Times, my immediate reaction was: "Wow! Here we go again: A white writer as the expert on African-American life. How does she rate this kind of attention?"

In the mid-1980s, I was writing and editing my first novel, "Baby of the Family," a story of a young black girl born with a caul over her face growing up different from the people around her in the Deep South of the mid-20th century. I was called again and again by my editor to explain and clarify why this child's experiences were more of a psychological and internal nature than the traditional tack in fiction and nonfiction of little black girls being regularly abused by family members.

"Tell me again," my editor asked. "Now, this is a little pampered spoiled protected black girl growing up in the South of the 1950s? Her biggest fear wasn't white people and what they allowed her to do? She wasn't afraid to go wandering alone up her neighborhood street on her way to the local beauty shop on a Saturday? She was surprised to discover a poor raggedy little girl growing up right across the street?"

These inquiries now seem even more insulting and ludicrous after reading articles day after day recently about how an unpublished white writer got a six-figure advance, published a book with a well-known company and experienced editors, all to national acclaim, before it was discovered as a fake. Juxtaposed with my own experience, this certainly speaks very loudly and clearly to how people of color are seen and perceived in the wider culture. Whose voices are blindly believed, and whose voices and information are questioned?

And in the final analysis, nearly a decade into the 21st century, with an African-American man and a white woman vying for the Democratic presidential nomination, how well do we Americans truly know and trust each other?

As a child of the South who proudly identifies herself as a Southerner, who loves the land, the language, the hot humid summers and even the conflicted history of the region, I so empathize with all the unheard and unheralded authentic urban voices of South Central L.A. who must be following this latest incident with feelings of resentment and divestment. These writers never even get close to procuring book contracts, to say nothing of being reviewed in the country's newspaper of record.

And as a new publisher, having raised these questions, I say a prayer that in the future I am more vigilant than accusatory in treading this literary minefield.

> Tina McElroy Ansa of St. Simons Island is a writer and founder of Down South Press.