'Daddy Didn't Read It: One Child's Heartbreaking Story Of Paternal Literary Rejection - And The Corporation That Saved Him'

Brilliant idea BBC!

"My 'rents sed i could no get no moby fone, n den i wen an rumbled sum old bird on street 2 get monies for it meself Den I got cawt n den got a holiday payed 4 by da taxman payer people, innit? itz bear gear, bra! Anywayz, after me holiday, i got fawt id rite a book and da kind beebeecee people bought it. Yay! Nwo i iz gonna be bear rich!"

Gosh, Moesha, racism and snobbery in one handy package! You should pitch a 'humour' column to the Daily Mail.

Clovis, if you were to do some research into Harper True (which I have) you'd find that they don't publish misery memoirs.

Lucuounu, it certainly is. And I suspect Dear oh dear could benefit from an unrest cure.

It's the pseudonym, Jonathan, the 'Moesha'. The author's indulging in a nasty little bit of ventriloquism and feels the need to pick an Afro-Caribbean moniker for his or her straw woman. I'm not sure that some of the other linguistic markers - "bear", "bra" - have much currency outside London's black community, either. So I feel pretty comfortable thinking this is a piece of casual racism; I do try not to go off half-cocked about this sort of thing, you know, and I'm quite happy to argue opinions when they are stated as opinion instead of crap caricature. I'm not trying to scare anyone off. The snobbery is right out in the open, on the other hand; you don't have to think that everything widespread is valuable to spot that.

Bra, blud, bear, wicked, etc. are all words used by many different factions of modern youth.
The name 'Moesha' is not restricted to any one racial group.
So, to be fair, your own racial stereotypes show through in your own comment!
If anything, the authro was merely highlighting a member of the 'chav' community.
And, by the way, 'chav' isn't racist. Neither is 'emo' or 'goth' or 'Daily Mail reader'... although I hope nobody out there is a Daily Mail/Express reader!!

Iocounu is absolutely right, I'm pig-sick of the word 'chav' being thrown around - it's not funny, it's offensive and the extent to which people use it shocks me. I don't need to lighten up, transgression can be extremely funny; however that post was just mean-spirited and snide. Oh, and for the record Moesha is an African-American name.

The origin of the word chav is probably from "traveller", though that's not actually a racial group and it is nowadays used in much the same way that Sloane Ranger used to be, ie just to denote a particular social type. Whether it is useful to identify people according to types is a whole other question.

Ioconou - that's interesting, as it seems to imply that Romanies coined the word. I assumed it'd been made up by the media, but would they know Romany words?

Thank you, Iucuounu, for taking the time to support your argument. Rational debate on the Bookseller boards - hurrah! I'd never come across Moesha as a name before, but that contextualisation does support your point. I still think the speech patterns are fairly generic youthspeak now, but you've identified specific racial indicators which were lost on me. As for 'chav', as I understood it, the Romanian etymology is speculative, even as far as the OED is concerned.

A quick look at some of the stories confirm your worst fears, rambling, poorly spelt, 'woe is me' ...I wish the beeb would encourage the best writers, perhaps by putting some resources into good drama instead of endless soaps.

There's that boring word elitism again. There should be a swear box.

Maria, did you put your essay into an online translator? Even I cannot make any sense of that.

Youse ar' all dead intelligent on dis website!

i dont think many of the people who have made the comments really understand the need for misery memoirs, firstly, as an author myself, i know that my book has given a lot of support and inspiration to victims, enabling them to find a path to survival, many teenagers going through the hell of daily abuse, get some understanding of why they are abused and get strength to find help, purely by reading a misery memoir, its a bit like a t.v programme, if you dont like it, dont watch or read it, but dont let your judgement stop others who may want to.
there is a market for everything in this world, yes people make money out of these books and why not, the same could be said for cookery or medical books, who am i to stop someone reading or writing, just because i dont like the subject matter, live and let live i say, for those who do like inspirational real life success stories my book is called "AFRAID"

Scintinlignly, i heard about it but am yet to confirm its viablity can you pls send me an official email address of the director for a posible enquiry....i have long been waiting for this opportunity to showcase my swagger talents....my yahoo email address is this segzey4luv2001@yahoo.com...I write from Nigeria, West Africa, Africa.

For long have been waiting to share my true life story with parents and teachers and children that cares to listen. I hope the organiser can mail me please..To be convinced and get the neccessary rules and regulation in place. And to know how to send the stories. here on my email address: segzey4luv2001@yahoo.com