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American Honor Killings, by David McConnell
PDF Ebook American Honor Killings, by David McConnell
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IN AMERICAN HONOR KILLINGS, straight and gay guys cross paths, and the result is murder. But what really happened? What role did hatred play? What about bullying and abuse? What were the men involved really like, and what was going on between them when the murder occurred? explores the truth behind squeamish reporting and uninformed political rants of the far right or fringe left. David McConnell, a New York-based novelist, researched cases from small-town Alabama to San Quentin's death row. The book recounts some of the most notorious crimes of our era.
BEGINNING IN 1999 and lasting until last year's conviction of a youth in Queens, New York, the book shows how some murderers think they're cleaning up society. Surprisingly, other killings feel almost preordained, not a matter of the victim's personality or actions so much as a twisted display of a young man's will to compete or dominate. We want to think these stories involve simple sexual conflict, either the killer's internal struggle over his own identity or a fatally miscalculated proposition. They're almost never that simple.
TOGETHER, THE CASES FORM A SECRET AMERICAN HISTORY of rage and desire. McConnell cuts through cant and political special pleading to turn these cases into enduring literature. In each story, victims, murderers, friends, and relatives come breathtakingly alive. The result is more soulful, more sensitive, more artful than the sort of "true crime" writing the book was modeled on. A wealth of new detail has been woven into old cases, while new cases are plumbed for the first time. The resulting stories play out exactly as they happened, an inexorable sequence of events--grisly, touching, disturbing, sometimes even with moments of levity.
- Sales Rank: #1079490 in eBooks
- Published on: 2013-03-05
- Released on: 2013-03-01
- Format: Kindle eBook
Review
"McConnell, who is gay, is convinced he has written a book that no straight man could have written, and he's probably right. Navigating the depressing world of these horrific murders would discourage all but the most determined, passionate writers. Finding the humanity in these killers and the nuance in these most inhumane killings would challenge all but the most compassionate of writers."
--LA Weekly
"McConnell pays close attention to character, scene, and illuminating details, while questioning masculinity and patriarchal institutions."
--Huffington Post (Recommended true-crime book)
"McConnell's research is impressive, his thorough approach itself an 'argument against the destruction or loss of a single detail.' Older, well-documented cases are reenergized with new information, and the stories of the more recent murders are told, for the first time, with the layers of complexity they deserve. Something must be said of this book's timeliness, the experience of reading it after a memorably violent year in America...A book like this is helpful, even downright necessary. It advises against lumping each atrocity into the same pile, reminding us to examine the cases separately--the only way we can begin to understand the roots of this violence and how me might squelch it...McConnell's approach is effective because it's literary, not academic: through extensive research, he's crafted engaging narratives, each populated by characters that demand our attention."
--Oxford American Magazine (Editor’s Pick)
"As this country again focuses on its endemic violence, David McConnell's book couldn't have arrived at a more apt time. By delving deep into the sexual brutality typically explained away with micro-waved Freudianism, he's given us a work that is searing, personal and yet with a clarity that adds to the national conversation...It's this truth telling, the sifting of sad ashes, that sets this book far above typical genre fare. Reading American Honor Killings is like driving by a forest fire, one vast yet still secretive--a fire that’s been burning for a long time."
--Lambda Literary Review
"Some may mistakenly think honor killings happen only in far-off, less developed countries, and only to women. But writer David McConnell's collection of short nonfiction pieces about honor killings in America is a searing look at masculinity and male sexual violence. The deep, vivid examination of these cases is masterful and arresting."
--The Advocate (Hot Sheet for March 1, 2013)
"In a culture where artists and celebs and everyday LGBT folks talk of being bullied but never of being the bully, McConnell's exposé challenges us to acknowledge the natural impulse to violence that rests in everyone."
--The Advocate
"In a culture where artists and celebs and everyday LGBT folks talk of being bullied, but never of being the bully, McConnell's expose challenges us to acknowledge the natural impulse to violence that rest in everyone."
--The Advocate (Interview)
"Come to these cases for the same reason McConnell does--not for the gore and depravity, but for the wish to understand what shadowy part of American manhood can be so volatile, leading again and again to tragedy. McConnell's careful consideration and painstaking research make American Honor Killings a worthwhile and valuable book."
--Next Magazine
"Whether the killers were spurred on by personal slights to their idea of manliness or a fanatical ideology, there is a sense of shattered psychologies that haunts both these pages and the larger American landscape. The eyes of many men in American Honor Killings are hard to look into, but this excellent book makes a case for doing so--even if what’s there is not so easy to define."
--Interview Magazine
"Some of the finest non-fiction crime writing can be found in David McConnell's new book, American Honor Killings. At its best, Mr. McConnell's writing compares favorably to Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and Norman Mailer's Executioner's Song. It is entirely appropriate that this book is dedicated to Edmund White, because, like Mr. White, David McConnell is the master of both the telling detail and the occasional punchline...it is a remarkable literary achievement. And as often happens in great literature, the biggest questions remain unanswered. I strongly recommend this book."
--Queer Reader
"A quick skim of the book will lead readers to see this as a work that highlights brutal crimes against gay men. But the book deserves a more nuanced and careful meditation. Through in-depth research that includes interviews, synthesizing and comparing news articles, traveling to the crime sites and getting to know the environments in which the crimes took place, and an elite novelist's eye for detail and storytelling, American Honor Killings is a work that relates to all men. It somehow made the true and clunky and speculative details of crime read smooth like a Cormac McCarthy novel. The research, especially for a work of literary nonfiction, will immediately remind readers of Truman Capote's masterpiece In Cold Blood, but at times the level of concise detail, especially when considering how McConnell addresses multiple unrelated crimes throughout this book, surpasses even what Capote achieved in his ultra-detailed observation of a singular crime...The book should be required reading in university-level gender studies and criminal justice programs, as well as in nonfiction form workshops."
--The Good Men Project
"Subtitled 'Desire and Rage Among Men,' McConnell's book is a study of murderous hate crimes against gay men. In explaining the reasoning behind his book's provocative title, McConnell notes that America differs significantly from countries where honor killings are pervasive in that its society 'isn't organized by clan or tribe or even family.' Nonetheless, he writes, America is a nation where 'the seat of honor for men is personal, religious, racial,' and among the worst affronts to that honor today are gay sexuality, 'immodesty,' and 'decadence.'"
--Cleveland.com
"McConnell tells these stories through the personal lens of his own experiences, observations, and responses. Moreover, he manages to extend sympathy to perpetrators as well as victims. The result is a blend of true crime journalism and sociological treatise, fascinating and sometimes chilling to read."
--Edge on the Net
"McConnell researched these cases extensively, then sat down with the murderers in jailhouse interviews so he could learn more about their motivations and reflections years later. The result is a harrowing bit of creative non-fiction, each case retold and examined thoroughly, complete with McConnell's cogent analysis and first-person accounts of the crimes."
--Xtra Magazine (Canada)
"Like Capote, McConnell blurs the lines of fiction and nonfiction. But only aesthetically--I don't mean to suggest that McConnell embroidered his work, as Capote is thought to have done with In Cold Blood. McConnell thinks of facts in terms of form, like there's something to be gained from telling violence as stories, though he won't tell us what."
--Chicago Reader
"David McConnell explores the role masculinity plays in violence in his latest work, American Honor Killings: Desire and Rage Among Men. McConnell reports the stories of six instances where both the murders and victims were men, often interviewing the incarcerated prisoners, and how the cases were portrayed in the media."
--Chicago Magazine
"And what [McConnell] finds and then conveys in American Honor Killings reminds us that while they are not us, the civilized world, they are more than just 'others' for whom hate crimes legislation is just one small piece of a puzzle that McConnell fearlessly unearths, no matter how rotten what underneath lies."
--LGBT Weekly
"[McConnell's] singularly gripping new non-fiction book...stunningly repurposes the strengths he brought to his earlier works: a restless introspection, a refusal to portray people as less than three-dimensional, and a sense of all-pervasive mystery."
*Airplane Read of the Month
--Passport Magazine
"McConnell's attempts to compare the ideal of threatened masculinity with the murderous rampages of young men are thoughtfully considered, fleshed out to the point where his narrative reenactments are chilling to read and not for the faint of heart."
--Bay Area Reporter
"Subtitled 'Desire and Rage Among Men,' McConnell's book is a study of murderous hate crimes against gay men."
--Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Not for the faint of heart, American Honor Killings: Desire and Rage Among Men is a detailed exploration of hate crime motivated murders of gay men, from 1999 to 2009. McConnell adds his own personal analysis and reflections on the crimes and links them together in a terrifying and all too familiar way."
--Baltimore Out Loud
"In this unnervingly beautiful new book, David McConnell investigates six murders of gay men over the last two decades…what’s most exciting about American Honor Killings is the way its nuance and detail sharpen the point of its cultural critique."
--Towel Rod
"McConnell has written a book as horrifying and as necessary as [In Cold Blood], and as likely to stand the test of time as a document of the consequences of sociopathic thinking."
--Shelf Inflicted
"American Honor Killings is an impressive effort to understand masculinity and violence in contemporary U.S. society. It's a graceful, thoughtful and productive counterargument to the claim that there are no explanations for horrifying violence--one that comprehends the humanity of a kind of violence that we would prefer to call inhuman, and one that I hope can serve as a tool for a deeper public conversation."
--NewCity Lit
"David McConnell has written with beautiful clarity and power about a very specific kind of murder. Not only is this book the best sort of true-crime writing, but it is also a stunning exploration of the concept of manhood in America. Refusing to judge or to gloss anything over, McConnell turns his impressive skills as a writer to a topic that all of us thinks about and few dare to discuss."
--Sebastian Junger, best-selling author of War and The Perfect Storm
"David McConnell's American Honor Killings is a masterpiece of reportage: engaging, deeply felt, and brilliantly imaginative. His subjects are heartland murderers driven by hatred of the Other--gays, nonwhites, Jews. But rather than take their crimes and ideologies at face value, McConnell dives into the killers' inner lives and emerges with shockingly intimate portraits of ordinary Americans gone horribly wrong. At turns heartbreaking and terrifying, American Honor Killings has the soul of a detective novel set in the darkest chambers of the human heart. If Truman Capote were alive today, he would die of envy. David McConnell has taken the mantle of great American nonfiction writer."
--Evan Wright, author of Generation Kill
"American Honor Killings is a spooky, addicting account of twisted sexual drives gone violently awry. McConnell's writing is as profound as Albert Camus's and as memorably chilling as Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. The reader of this astonishing text is dared to set aside squeamishness and look right into the heart of American darkness, where bloody and horrifying acts are the tragic outcomes of lives gone from bad to worse, the murderers themselves victimized by neglect, abuse, and an atmosphere of racist, homophobic hatred, the ugly underbelly of poverty and desperation.”
--Rick Whitaker, author of Assuming the Position: A Memoir of Hustling and The First Time I Met Frank O’Hara: Reading Gay American Writers
"Looking at the nature of masculinity and searching to find why crimes like this happen, McConnell arrives at no clear answers and instead adds new questions about rage and pride and takes us into the politics of gender and society’s expectations of gender…There is a lot of information in this book and a lot to read and a large cast of characters. It is a fascinating read and an educative one as well. McConnell proved himself to me as a writer with his novels and he now proves that he is just as good a writer of nonfiction."
--Amos Lassen
About the Author
David McConnell is the author of the acclaimed novel, The Silver Hearted, 2010. His short fiction and journalism have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, including The Literary Review (UK), Granta and Prospect Magazine (UK). His novel The Firebrat came out in 2003. He’s the former co-chair of the Lambda Literary Foundation. McConnell lives in New York City.
Most helpful customer reviews
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
Insane hatred described in meticulous detail
By The Mohawked Reviewer
Firstly and foremost, I won this book in a drawing from LibraryThing. Despite the fact that I didn't pay a dime for it, I will give it a candid assessment below.
So this is the bit in which I traditionally summarize the plot, and I'll admit this book wasn't what I expected. When I hear the phrase "honor killings" I expect traditional murders to safeguard the reputation of the family. The murderous rampages described here are plain and simple hate crimes. This does nothing to diminish them or their importance, certainly, but reading this book I did have trouble correlating the title with the content. Our author describes at length, and with absolute candor, the act of killing because of prejudice against race, religion and primarily, sexual orientation. The work is an incisive view into the odious act of hating and destroying someone just because of the demographic into which they fall. Or, to put it more simply, these are the truly scary people with which we share society.
Evaluating this book, on the positive side the author has done us a great service. He's shielded us from nothing. No detail or nuance is hidden and his research is intimate and complete. We see these heinous acts from the inside of the killer's head and from the outside as viewed by the world in general.
On the negative side, I'll admit that I just couldn't carry on reading this whole thing. By the halfway point I felt that I'd fairly well "gotten the point" as it were. The killers are heartless bigots motivated by hate and fortified by misplaced religious beliefs. A hundred or so pages of that seemed sufficient. I didn't need more text to back up my support of the author as I was solidly and convinced from the beginning.
In summary, this book is a meticulously researched and insightful view into the mind of those that hate to the point of murder. If it suffers, it suffers only from the fact that I agree with it so vehemently and don't really need more examples to fortify my dislike for religious zealotry. An excellent work that I just couldn't finish because it resonated far too strongly.
PS: It is my endeavor to provide reviews that are succinct, honest, balanced and above all help the potential reader to answer the simple question, "Do I want to read this or not?" Any feedback you can provide about how you feel I have accomplished those goals (or not) is immensely appreciated.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Cool Precision in the Exploration of a Sensational Topic
By Cole
American Honor Killings investigates the lurid nexus of sex, violence, masculinity and hate. David McConnell tells the stories of a half dozen incidents of anti-gay violence and, in his telling, the participants come alive on the page. We meet Darrell Madden, the gay porn star, skin head kidnapper/murderer; 18-year-old victim Steven “Scooby” Parrish, who “sexted” a photograph of his genitals to a co-worker in jest and was killed by his fellow gang members among whom was his closest childhood friend; and, in details gleaned from attending the trials, John Katehis, the underage New York City Satanist/hustler who stabbed to death the semi-celebrity trick who’d hired him for a masochistic smothering scene.
The tremendous strength of this book is the absence of both the exaggerated language and excessive authorial elaboration that characterizes much true crime writing and the simultaneous absence of psychological and sociological theories and jargon that are typical of academic investigations of similar subject matter. McConnell gets out of the way and lets the stories tell themselves; the result is riveting.
American Honor Killings is a catalog of the grotesque evil that grows out of pride and fear; a mirror that shows us what it means to be a man in America; and an unvarnished, infinitely complex query that, like the hapless monsters McConnell unveils, stays with you long after you are finished reading.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Are these really considered "honor killings?"
By T. Young
I have to admit that this is a difficult book for me to review. I finished the book the day I learned of yet another antigay murder in New York City the night before. It's also difficult for me to review, because the author himself so readily points out some of the shortcomings of the work. I also have to wonder if my lack of appreciation for the book involves the subject of the book itself; it's certainly a difficult topic.
The book focuses on several murders of gay men over the past few decades, and the the premise is that the killers committed these acts partly in an effort to maintain their honor and demonstrate their masculinity. The author briefly touches upon the "gay panic" defense; however, he also admits in the introduction that as acceptance of gay and lesbian people increases, the violent reaction to the suggestion that someone might be gay has decreased. He then proceeds to discuss cases in which the killers felt that they were murdering in an effort to be righteous or cleanse society in some way.
David McConnell admits he is not a journalist, and I felt that there were times in the book where I wished he was. I wanted him to merely relate the facts for the case and let them speak. Instead, he describes a crime and tries to relate what he supposes MIGHT have been going through the killer's mind. I found this whole supposition very distracting and I felt there were times that it seemed a little overreaching. I wish he would have just committed to a train of thought, and instead the approach is more of a "he might have thought this, or he might have thought that" kind of thing.
I have to admit, I also found the crimes that the author actually highlights rather odd choices. Several of the killings are committed by members of Neo-Nazi or White Supremacists groups. In the final murder discussed, that of news reporter George Weber a few years ago, I did not see any part of the murder in which the author could conclude the violence took place as an "honor killing."
Despite my criticisms, I do think that the book makes some interesting points, and I do think that the topic of anti-gay hate crimes deserves to be studied more. I appreciate David McConnell raising the topic and highlighting these crimes and allowing these victims to be remembered again.
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