American Honor Killings
Desire and Rage Among Men
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? American Honor Killings 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.
Winner of the 2014 American Library Association Stonewall Book Award for Non-Fiction
Praise for American Honor Killings
"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 is impressive skills as a writer to a topic that all of us think about and few dare to discuss. If I taught non-fiction in a college I would teach this book."
— Sebastian Junger, author of 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, 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
"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."
— Rick Whitaker, author of An Honest Ghost
“Covering 1999 to 2011, he attempts to demonstrate how the adherence to a rigid definition of masculinity caused these particular murderers to commit their crimes, and the case of Darrell Madden almost proves the point as McConnell, in a journalistic tour de force made all the more impressive by jailhouse interviews, traces the killer’s trajectory from traumatized farm boy to gay porn pinup, white supremacist, and eventually murderer of Steve Domer.”
“Homophobia is not accepted as a mitigating circumstance in murder, but there is no doubt that men are still murdered for being gay. From Jon Schmitz (‘The Jenny Jones Killer’) to John Katehis (the teenage hustler who murdered radio personality George Weber), novelist McConnell (co-chair, Lambda Literary Foundation; The Silver Hearted) has compiled a number of these cases and looks into the culture of masculinity for clues to the dynamics behind these killings. Many of the murderers discussed here belonged to a hypermasculine subculture (e.g., skinheads, gangs, fundamentalist religious cults), while others acted alone. But in all the cases, some affront to the killer’s sense of manhood seemed to require a very public act of violence, as if the violence itself reaffirmed his masculinity. Some of the killers might have been secretly bisexual or gender confused, but not so often as to be the common thread in these murders. VERDICT With no clear answers, but some very intriguing questions, these vignettes of masculine pride and rage will appeal to those interested in gender politics and gay studies as well as true crime fans.”
“The author’s case studies reflect an intensive investigation into the economic and cultural backgrounds of a wide variety of extremist cultures, research that involved interviews with law enforcement officials, families of victims and the convicted criminals themselves. A shocking look at the subculture of violent crime, not for the fainthearted.”
Related Links
Great True Crime Books on Huffington Post
Author Lee Gutkind has included American Honor Killings in truly illustrious company
A review of American Honor Killings by Chris Bollen
A great, long article on the book
An interview with Patrick Ryan of Granta
An article I wrote about a too well-known poem
An amazing review by Cameron Conaway
An article I wrote about music and the book
American Honor Killings
A Dossier
This is a collection of supplemental materials curated by author David McConnell to accompany his book American Honor Killings. Comprising photographs, links and selected texts, this dossier is intended to be an integral extension of the book. McConnell has organized the material to correspond with the chapters of the book, and a reader’s guide is provided at the end.
These items are not meant to stand alone and may not be fully comprehensible without reference to the book. However, beyond offering visual and documentary depth to the narrative—perhaps better described as "surface"—the commentary includes details and insights that did not appear in the published text.
An abbreviated table of contents is included first for orientation, followed by chapter-by-chapter postings of photographs, commentary, and related materials.