An eagle-eyed Hillel Italie spotted Forrest Carter‘s The Education of Little Tree on a recommended reading list at the Oprah website, and wondered why, considering that the author turned out not to be a Cherokee Indian but a KKK member who wrote speeches for George Wallace. The answer: it was an archival mistake. Oprah Winfrey had been a fan of the book, Italie reports, but she went public in 1994 with her disenchantment, unable to reconcile the “loving story” she read with Carter’s actual background.
(The Education of Little Tree has come up on GalleyCat before, most pointedly in our coverage of fellow Fake Native American Memoirist Nasdijj.)