News & Features » February 2013 » American Honor Killings Featured in LA Weekly

American Honor Killings Featured in LA Weekly

David McConnell, author of American Honor Killings: Desire & Rage Among Men, talks with LA Weekly.

From the article:

McConnell, who has two novels to his credit, acknowledges that the title of his first nonfiction work is deliberately confusing. “I wanted to stir things up. I wanted to get people thinking differently about these cases,” he tells the Weekly. “It’s too easy to just classify them as hate crimes and be done with it. Hate is a factor in all of them, but it’s much more complex than that.”

Honor killings have traditionally been defined as murders committed, particularly in the Middle East or South Asia, by outraged men who kill their daughters or sisters because the women engaged in culturally forbidden sexual activity that brought dishonor to their family. McConnell is the first to characterize murders of American gay men by their male peers — whether gay, straight or gender-confused — as honor killings.

“We refuse to believe honor killings happen in America. People think they only occur in the mountains of Afghanistan, among tribes and other primitive people,” McConnell says. “But the insane impulse behind honor killing is at work right here in America among the minds of many young men.”

Read the full review here.

Posted: Feb 8, 2013

Category: News | Tags: American Honor Killings, David McConnell, LA Weekly