© Columbia University Press
Losing Matt Shepard: Life and Politics in the Aftermath of Anti-Gay Murder
Paper, 160 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-11859-0
$21.95
/ £14.95
October, 2000
Cloth, 160 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-11858-3
$72.00
/ £49.50
"Getting behind the headlines, preconceptions and easy stereotypes, Loffreda has produced a book that mixes intelligence and compassion with crack reporting and sharp insight." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"This well-written account gets beyond the area’s demographics and typical responses to the crime to uncover uncomfortable complexities and contradictions that belie our assumptions about this episode. . . . A good cross-over book for understanding the complexity of peoples'struggle for (and opposition to) gay rights." — Library Journal (starred review)
"A brilliant book full of cool reason and flashing insight." — The Boston Globe
"Loffreda has crafted a richly layered narrative that encompasses both the deed and the community where it occurred. . . . Losing Matt Shepard is a powerful meditation on the distortions inherent in the ways we comprehend the world." — David L. Kirp, The Nation
"As the author examines the cultural repercussions of Shepard's death, she also provides an objective history of hate crimes and the efforts at legislation, taking both extreme conservatives and extreme liberals to task along the way." — School Library Journal
"Anyone who wishes to really know anything about the present state of queer politics in the U.S. must run-- not walk... to purchase a copy of Beth Loffreda's phenomenal book. . . . A stunning blueprint for rethinking queer politics more generally. It is a book in which the poetic language begs readers to savor every syllable. It is a book that skillfully reels readers in and rewards them with profoundly astute analysis and nuanced political engagement with a subject that has affected so many of us. Read this book for its grace, for its politics, for its promise." — Mary Jane Knopf Newman, The Lesbian Review of BooksAssistant Professor of English at Boise State University
"Loffreda crafts a rich and textured insider's account . . . [and] skillfully uses interviews, media reports, and firsthand accounts that she carefully mediates through the lenses of culture, politics, and religion to move beyond a simple factual retelling of a gay murder to a more complex understanding of what it means to exist and survive as a lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender person." — Kristopher Wells, Adult Education Quarterly
"An enormously skillful and moving book. Eschewing the stereotypes and platitudes fed us by the media, Beth Loffreda has interviewed a wide range of so-called ordinary people in Laramie and has given us an account of extraordinary subtlety. Refusing to settle for easy generalizations, she has forced us to attend to the vivid particularities of setting and character involved in Shepard’s tragic murder. And she has done so with impressive sensitivity and remarkable moral clarity." — Martin Duberman, author of Paul Robeson: A Biography and Stonewall
"When we pledge allegiance to the United States we say 'with liberty and justice for all’; Losing Matt Shepard is an excellent book about citizens who don’t understand that 'all'means 'all’. . . . It is a must-read for understanding the cultural wars still raging in the twenty-first century." — Patricia Schroeder, former U.S. Representative from Colorado
"Discusses the politics of sexuality and hate crimes. Needs to be in libraries for developing understanding of the issues that surround this infamous murder." — Ruth Jean Shaw, AASL, "Outstanding" Rated Titles from University Press Books: Selected for Public and Secondary School Libraries