{"id":1206,"date":"2013-10-22T17:00:10","date_gmt":"2013-10-22T22:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/?p=1206"},"modified":"2013-10-11T17:01:39","modified_gmt":"2013-10-11T22:01:39","slug":"american-honor-killings-desire-and-rage-among-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/american-honor-killings-desire-and-rage-among-men\/","title":{"rendered":"American Honor Killings: Desire and Rage among Men"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/american-honor.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-1189\" style=\"border: 0pt none; float: left; padding-right: 10px; padding-bottom: 0px;\" alt=\"Cover of American Honor Killings\" src=\"http:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/american-honor-191x300.png\" width=\"191\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/american-honor-191x300.png 191w, https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/american-honor.png 330w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 191px) 100vw, 191px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Find this book in a library near you!\" href=\"http:\/\/www.worldcat.org\/oclc\/783154101\">David McConnell. American Honor Killings: Desire and Rage among Men.\u00a0Akashic Books, 2013. PB. 256p. $15.95. 978-1-61775-132-5.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>How does one approach the murders of gay men in America? David McConnell deftly tackles this tough subject using a number of different cases to try to understand what he terms \u201cAmerican Honor Killings.\u201d The journey involves traveling to places across the country and talking to friends of the deceased as well as, in several cases, the murderers themselves.<\/p>\n<p>The odyssey is as difficult for the author as it is for the reader. What, we wonder, drives them to murder, and why target gay men? Sometimes the standard explanations fail to grasp the true complexity of motivation, ranging from the mad, hyper-religious insanity of Matthew Williams, to the repressed and fearful homosexuality that led Darrell Madden to participate in the murder of a gay man.<\/p>\n<p>McConnell\u2019s investigations lead him on a long and winding path, trying to answer why these men killed gays and taking us to some very unsettling places. No small consideration is the attempt to answer the related question of just what defines masculinity because notions of what it is to be a man drive some of the murders in the work. In some instances, homosexuality (whether acts or the simple desire itself) is seen as an offense to a code of honor, a poisonous idea that led to the murder of Billy Jack Gaither. McConnell finishes with a long discussion of the murder of journalist George Weber and a meditation on the complexity of motives that underlie the murders in the book.<\/p>\n<p>Those who would like to learn more about hate crime murders, as well as those who enjoy \u201ctrue crime\u201d narratives, will find this book interesting. While much of the information came from interviews, the book would have benefited from a bibliography, or at least a list of works for further reading. This book is recommended for public libraries.<\/p>\n<p>Reviewer: <strong>Brady Clemens<\/strong>, Director<\/p>\n<p>Juniata County Library, Mifflintown (PA)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David McConnell. American Honor Killings: Desire and Rage among Men.\u00a0Akashic Books, 2013. PB. 256p. $15.95. 978-1-61775-132-5.\u00a0 &nbsp; How does one approach the murders of gay men in America? David McConnell deftly tackles this tough subject using a number of different cases to try to understand what he terms \u201cAmerican Honor Killings.\u201d The journey involves traveling [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1164,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[27,19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}