In the United States publishing world, Barrus' work is cited as an example of memoirs released under misleading pretenses.
[2] Marrying at a young age, Barrus took a variety of jobs and lived in different regions of the country in his early years.
[3] In 1996, he and his wife Tina moved from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida to a Bureau of Indian Affairs School at Mariano Lake, New Mexico.
His novel Genocide was recognized as an early contribution to AIDS literature, described by critic Toby Johnson as "dark and pessimistic".
[3] His essay, "The Blood Runs Like a River Through My Dreams", was published in Esquire in 1999 and was a finalist in the National Magazine Awards that year.
[8] 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.
"[12] 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.
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.
[2] In January 2006, the journalist Matthew Fleischer published "Navahoax", an article in the LA Weekly, documenting Nasdijj as an ethnic European American named Timothy Patrick "Tim" Barrus.
A former literary agent for Nasdijj, while not confirming the LA Weekly article, called it "well researched and highly persuasive.
"[13] 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.
The article presented excerpts from Nasdijj's blog with the headline, "Deserving Death for Evil Deeds, by Tim Barrus".
[2] Asked by Alexie to review the books by Nasdijj, Morris found numerous errors that led him to believe the author was an impostor.
[2]The author and critic David Treuer (Ojibwe) described Barrus' actions as "harmful cultural fraud.
"[16] The activist Suzan Shown Harjo (Muscogee Creek and Cheyenne) questioned why the publishing world was taken in by Native American impostors.
[2] She said, "There should be a law for the Navajo Nation to sue Barrus for the profits he made while committing the crime of stealing tribal identity.
[2]) Barrus' hoax gained attention for occurring at the same time as other literary scandals: the writer James Frey was found to have made up portions of works published as memoirs, and the purported author JT LeRoy was revealed as a deception created by three people: a woman who performed as the young man in public appearances, and a woman and man who wrote "his" published works.
[18] 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.
"[2]After the scandal broke, J. Peder Zane, the News & Observer's book-review editor, who had published some of Nasdijj's work and promoted his writing, reflected, I felt no sense of betrayal.
Chaikivsky describes a man whose "shifting emotional temperature" veered between "meticulousness and careful good manners" and "a full roar."
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.
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.
[21] 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.