 
|
|
 |
|
Losing Matt Shepard
by Beth Loffreda
| List Price: |
$21.95 |
| Price: |
$16.46 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. |
| You Save: |
$5.49 (25%) |
|
|
Paperback
Publisher: Columbia University Press
The infamous murder in October 1998 of a twenty-one-year-old gay University of Wyoming student ignited a media frenzy. The crime resonated deeply with America´s bitter history of violence against minorities, and something about Matt Shepard himself struck a chord with people across the nation. Although the details of the tragedy are familiar to most people, the complex and ever-shifting context of the killing is not. Losing Matt Shepard explores why the murder still haunts us -and why it should. Beth Loffreda is uniquely qualified to write this account. As a professor new to the state and a straight faculty advisor to the campus Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Association, she is both an insider and outsider to the events. She draws upon her own penetrating observations as well as dozens of interviews with students, townspeople, police officers, journalists, state politicians, activists, and gay and lesbian residents to make visible the knot of forces tied together by the fate of this young man. This book shows how the politics of sexuality -perhaps now the most divisive issue in America´s culture wars -unfolds in a remote and sparsely populated area of the country. Loffreda brilliantly captures daily life since October 1998 in Laramie, Wyoming -a community in a rural, poor, conservative, and breathtakingly beautiful state without a single gay bar or bookstore. Rather than focus only on Matt Shepard, she presents a full range of characters, including a panoply of locals (both gay and straight), the national gay activists who quickly descended on Laramie, the indefatigable homicide investigators, the often unreflective journalists of the national media, and even a cameo appearance by Peter, Paul, and Mary. Loffreda courses through a wide ambit of events: from the attempts by students and townspeople to rise above the anti-gay theatrics of defrocked minister Fred Phelps to the spontaneous, grassroots support for Matt at the university´s homecoming parade, from the emotionally charged town council discussions about bias crimes legislation to the tireless efforts of the investigators to trace that grim night´s trail of evidence. Charting these and many other events, Losing Matt Shepard not only recounts the typical responses to Matt´s death but also the surprising stories of those whose lives were transformed but ignored in the media frenzy.
Laramie, Wyoming, is a complicated town that has only become more so since the infamous murder of a gay University of Wyoming student named Matt Shepard on a lonely dirt road in October 1998. A university town in the middle of one of the country's most rural, poor, and conservative states, it was unwittingly thrown into the middle of the nation's debates over homosexuality and hate crimes. While "Laramie didn't kill Matt," as University of Wyoming professor Beth Loffreda writes, "It might let us see how the politics of sexuality--perhaps now the most divisive issue in America's 'culture wars'--plays out in a forgotten corner of the country." As an insider and an outsider (she is the straight advisor to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Association and a state newcomer clearly in love with her surroundings), Loffreda approaches the complex questions the media, with their pack mentality, overlooked or shied away from using her own local but not provincial perspective. Why did Matt's death, which was one of 33 anti-gay murders that year, grip the nation? Why did none of the seven bias crimes bills proposed in Wyoming after the murder pass? What is the experience of being homosexual in a state with not a single gay gathering place to speak of and most people too afraid to be out? What happens when emotion--rather than action--is the only response to a hate crime? And how should Matt be remembered? Leaving the media assumptions about the "hate state" in the dust, Loffreda deftly portrays a people deeply affected by what has happened in their midst, replete with the daily contradictions, political clashes, and halting transformations that defy sound bites. She introduces us to those the media never thought to interview--a jaded gay American Indian as well as Mexican American university students with their own stories of bigotry--and those making the real change in Laramie: people like Mike, who came out after Matt's death and has found the courage to become an activist, and the gays and lesbians who dressed as angels during the murderers' trials, blocking defrocked minister Fred Phelps and his virulent anti-gay messages with their enormous wings. Loffreda's nuanced, perceptive, and graceful discussion reminds us that the inheritance of Matt's death is far from settled for any of us. --Lesley Reed
| Customer Reviews: |
|
| |
| Always Relevant |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
 |
|
Lofredda, Beth. "Losing Matt Shephard", Columbia University Press, 2001.
Always Relevant
Amos Lassen
It hurts me to write that evil and hatred are always with us but it is a fact that we must learn to deal with. Matthew Shephard's murder came about because of evil and hatred and as a function of what has since become known as "the culture of hate".
The book is about Laramie, Worming and the larger society of the "prairie and mountain west of North America. This is not a biography of Matthew Shephard but it is about the community and the region in which he lived. That is the way that we can understand him and how and why he died the way he did. The book goes further than what happened and what were the motives for his death. This is a look at the events that happened to the people of Laramie and how they were pushed into the national spotlight when Matthew Shephard was murdered in 1998. The major theme is the national hysteria of the American media which changed the beating of a young man into a hate crime. There was no regard for the people of the region and Laramie became almost equated with the most notorious of the death camps of the Second World War. But do we know what really happened?
Of course the issue cannot simply be reduced to homophobia when we look at the polarity of the issue of homosexuality. Loffreda shows that Shephard's murder was based on many motives having to do with social class, economics, intent to rob, a macho culture and a depressed environment. It seems that the cause of the crime was the wish to achieve superiority and to bully, intimidate and victimize someone who was seen as weaker. Is this also not a hate crime?
Loffreda also spends time on the representation of the gay male and female lifestyles of those who lived in the area. In Wyoming, being "out" was not an option and many seem to feel that there are no homosexuals in the area. The author knows many in the gay community there and she gives is different and varying responses as to why it occurred. But to call the gay men and women of Laramie is incorrect, Very much like here in Little Rock, there is no gay community but there are gay people. The word community connotes cohesiveness and a togetherness that the gays of Wyoming do not share. The people are not organized and neither do they wish to be. They lack the resources to make differences politically and socially and one would think that after losing one of their own that they would come together. They did not and still have not. It was celebrities and national GLBT organizations as well as non-gay groups that brought attention to Laramie. In the process, Matthew Shephard was lost.
It appears to me that the purpose of the book was to recover Laramie and not Shephard. Lofredda reclaims the town on its own terms minus the media and she talks of Laramie now. She says there is a sense of widespread decency and a sense of remorse as well as a desire to overcome complacency but for the gay people of Laramie, not much has changed. There is still fear and anger and invisibility but they have added a feeling of love which was not always expressed before. Lofredda gives a clear picture of the events with no prejudice for either side. She is fair and she is honest and she tried to represent everyone. Matthew Shephard was not lost. His specter is there and his legacy is just what the author writes about. Perhaps it is not a thing of beauty but it is what is.
|
| Stunning, complicated |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
|
|
I'm using this book this semester in my Intro to GLBTQ Studies course. I speed read it this summer, ordered it for my students, and now have just re-read it. I was moved to tears by Loffreda's quiet argument and refusal of simple, pop-psych explanations. Her writing challenges both gays and straights, and the arguments many use to explain Matt Shepard's murder as a function of Wyoming's benighted 'culture of hate.' It's a wonderful book that I look forward to assigning, and reading, again. Thanks Beth!
|
| Still relevant almost ten years later |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
|
|
Having been a student in Laramie and enjoying Dr. Loffreda as a favorite professor, I knew I might struggle to look at this book with an objective, critical eye. I think that I was successful, and still I couldn't put it down. Though people talk about Matt Shepard's murder around here regularly, I learned a great deal from this piece, besides being quite moved as well. One reviewer on here says she doesn't tackle the "hard questions." Well, to do so would probably have been rather presumptuous and ultimately impossible. The community and even the nation still struggles to answer, or even articulate, those hard questions. So Loffreda is wise to stick to the facts, yet infused with genuine emotion and testimony from those involved directly and peripherally. Her discussions of the political repercussions is incredibly illuminating and thought-provoking, and I think this is (and should be) the book's primary aim. Sometimes it is difficult to read, but only emotionally. Loffreda's eloquent but never flowery prose makes it otherwise a great reading experience.
|
| A lot of things found... |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
|
|
Like "The Laramie Project", this book is about Laramie, and the larger society of the prairie and mountain West of Noorth America. It is not a biography of Matthew Shepard, nor is it remotely intended to be. That reflects a deliberate decision to respect not only his privacy, but also that of a lot of his friends and relatives who have wanted to keep their memories of Matt to themselves. This can be debated: in the end Romaine patterson and Judy Shepard have thought they do him a better service by trying to tell what he was like as a man, so that he doesn't get lost in various agendas requiring him to be either a plaster saint, or a irresponsible adventurer if not worse).
Either approach will attract its critics. However, as a biographical matter, there is something which must be faced. Matt Shepard was a Westerner of Wyoming, and it was home to him. He wasn't the one out of place in Laramie. Without some understanding of that community and region, you will not understand him.
As a Westerner, although from a very different part of it, I very much appreciated this book. Beth Loffreda is a newcomer, but, unlike many, has spent the time to know and understand the Prairie/Mountain West, without losing a proper objectivity. Its nuances and currents can be easily lost in the presence of stereotyping (something gays would know about), some f which is certainly designed to adavnce agendas of any all varieties. It is easy to idealize; it is easy to denounce. It is much more difficult to describe and understand. She does it very well.
I have seen it written elsewhere that the only two questions which matter are: 1) what happened to Matthew, and 2) what were the motives for his death? I suggest that this book gets us a lot further along towards answers to those questions than some critics might imagine.
If, indeed, it is to be argued that Matthew's fate arose because of some peuliarity of the place where he was killed, then that peculiarity should be assessed. Under examination, it's not an easy question to answer. Simple denunciations of "the usual suspects" doesn't work., and the ones which might matter lie more deeply than that. As far as I have been able to trace it, the answer seems to me to cut either way, It can be argued that there are things about the society which leave young men with no way to express themselves emotionally except in anger, esepcially where other males are concerned. Against this, there is a greater day-to-day tolerance for individuals who are recognized as contributing to the community, whatever unpopular thing they may be or think. That community mya have the habit of overestimating its tolerance (and I think that's a fair criticism of the place), but it has its own reality. Matthew himself, a son of that area, had attained his own position there before going to Switzerland, and showed eveery sign of resuming it when his life was cut short.
As to the motivations of his killers, it has to be said that neither of them posess enough insight or understanding of themselves ever to give us a proper explanation. That doesn't lie within their limited abilities. If we are going to find anythinh more than our own suppositions and yes) prejudices, we'll have to try and find it in their communities.
This book is well worth whatever you need to do to read it.
|
| Reclaiming Laramie |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
|
|
|
Those looking for a journalistic treatment of this subject, exposing sensational details and vivid personalities, will be disappointed in this book. It is an even-handed, somewhat reserved reflection on the events that swept the people of Laramie, Wyoming, into the national spotlight when Matt Shepard was murdered in October 1998. While there are several themes in the book, the chief one is the hysteria of the national media, which transformed the story of a young man's beating and death into a horrific hate crime, with all the over-simplification, instant analysis, and easy generalizations of highly competitive news organizations. Understanding the vast complexity of the social context that the murder emerged from and its meaning in terms of the people who make up the fabric of that community have been left for more thoughtful observers, writers and thinkers like the author, who can with greater knowledge, sensitivity, and analytical abilities address the central question, what REALLY happened? Given the polarizing issue of sexual orientation, it's easy for readers to fault Loffreda for her refusal to reduce the subject to a black-and-white matter of homophobia. She makes an interesting argument about hate crimes, using Matt's murder as a way to show that the notion of a crime motivated purely by hate is an abstraction, and what really motivated this murder was a whole tapestry of motives having to do with social class, intent to rob, upbringing, a macho culture, and a depressed social and economic environment. If you boil it down to anything, what seems to be at the root of the crime is a simple wish to bully, intimidate, and victimize someone perceived as weaker. Where is the hate and where is the bias in all this, she wonders. It's there, yes, but so is much else that can't be addressed by labeling it as a bias crime. Much of the book is also an attempt to represent the distinctive "lifestyle" of gay men and women living in a rural, thinly populated state, where being "out" is not an option, and there is a generally held belief that homosexuality does not exist there. Involved as she is with the gay community in Laramie, the author is familiar with many gay men and women who appear in the pages of her book, each expressing varying responses to the murder of one of their own. What's instructive is that "gay community" is a misnomer here, where there essentially is none. There is little organization and few resources to make a difference either socially or politically. Instead, national organizations and their celebrity representatives swoop in to capitalize on Matt's murder in the interest of their own agendas, both pro- and anti-gay. Matt gets "lost" in many ways, and this is only one of them. Loffreda does not set out to win back Matt Shepard, but she does a lot to recover Laramie itself. She reclaims a town in its own terms, not those of the media. While she struggles with residents' resistance to change and the inappropriateness of their responses (emphasizing emotion rather than action), she acknowledges a wide-spread decency, a feeling of remorse, and a genuine wish to overcome complacency. For the gay men and women of Laramie, not a lot changes. There is still fear and anger, to go along with invisibility. But there is also love of this place on the wind-swept prairie, and a belief that for all its drawbacks, this is home. I recommend this book for its attempt to undo the damage done by the occupying army of the national media. In that respect, it makes an interesting companion to the film "Bowling for Columbine."
|
|
