Outrage: The Story Behind the Tawana Brawley Hoax

by Robert D. McFadden

From the team of reporters who broke the grand jury expose of the Tawana Brawley hoax comes a brilliant chronicle of the most inflammatory racial episode in recent years--a terrifying, sobering portrait of politics, the media, and an American tinderbox of race, prejudice, and fear.

"On Thanksgiving weekend in 1987, in a quiet Hudson Valley town, neighbors at a graden apartment complex found a teenage black girl curled up inside a garbage bag, her clothes and body smeared with excrement and scrawled racial slurs ---- 'Nigger'.'KKK'.'Bitch.' She couldn't ---- or wouldn't ---- speak, but in scribbled notes, nods, and shrugs indicated that she had been abducted and sexually assaulted by white racists, possibly lawmen."

Genres: Nonfiction

408 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Jean Barry · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a mess. I actually feel sorry for Tawana. She had no role models in her life. Sad, sad, sad. Her aunt Juanita tried, some, but everybody took advantage of Tawana, to suit their own purposes. It would be nice if she could now own up to her--albeit 15-year-old's -- part in it, and apologize. Perhaps she could, at long last, set the good example for all those people who knew better, but did wrong anyway, and ask for forgiveness.

[R.J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fairly crisp and deft reporting of the Tawana Brawley matter. I’m a bit suspicious about the framing device, a group of African-Americans meet routinely at a diner in Hash back-and-forth on the matter. It just seems a way to close the book with a black voice Claiming he didn’t believe her. I find that choice by the authors more than a bit troubling.

[Bill Varon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must read for anyone who doubts my assertion that al sharpton, jessie jackson, spike lee, louis farrakhan, etc. etc. are true racial hate-mongers and twisted bigots in America and have been for 20 or more years. These are the folks holding back black Americans as much or more than any failed policies or hateful racism on the part of white America. The Tawana Brawley hoax was just one of so many incidents that these guys have used to create hate between the races. Guess who was screaming loudest in New Orleans a couple years ago? All of the above named losers. Yes, our government could have reacted better, but NO, Bush did not create a hurricane and he did not blow up levees and he did not tell people to stay put and he does not hate people for being African American. Hate emanates from the losers listed in the first sentence above.

[Mark Konrad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally the truth!