I am a Wyoming native, and live here still. I do not know a single person who was not disgusted and horrified by what happened to Matthew Shepard. It is sad that I must feel so much pride for this fact, but considering how damn conservative this state is, it was something that worried me in the days surrounding Matt's beating and death, and I was so amazed at the outpouring of grief from everyone here.
Matt's funeral took place in my home town of Casper. The Westboro Baptist church flocked to the small episcopal church where the service was held, wielding their "God hates fags" signs. Anticipating this, many Casper residents also went to the churchyard. They stood side by side, and turned their backs on the Westboro demonstrators. It was something that moves me still to this day when I think about it.
In May of this year, nearly 11 years after Matt's death, our state's lone representative voted against the Matthew Shepard Act. While this only reaffirmed my poor opinion of Cynthia Lummis, it also draws into question what this will mean for Wyoming. And what it will say about us if she is reelected in 2010.
It's so great to see this post. I work at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, and along with 100 other theatres around the country, we are presenting a new piece by Moises Kaufman and the Techtonic Theatre Project, creators of the play "The Laramie Project." On Oct. 12, all the participating theatres will do a reading of their new piece, "The Laramie Project Epilogue." The performance group went back to Laramie 10 years later to see how the death of Matthew had affected the community; how it changed, or if it even had. NY Theatre Workshop will then live webcast the Q&A for all the theatres to show, and our audience members can participate too by tweeting, Facebooking, etc. It's a really cool project, and should raise a good amount of funds. If you want to see if it's playing in your town, check out the website: [laramieproject.org]
I really appreciate her comment that she wants people to remember Matthew how he really was: he wasn't an angel or perfect, and it's important to be able to hear that for many people. I can't imagine the awful pain that comes in having this happen to someone you love.
Fully, fully support this. Along with homosexuals, transgender people are targeted for violence at a higher rate, for much the same reasons. They are hate crimes, pure and simple.
I also like the working "actual or perceived sexual orientation". While it's nowhere near the same, I have several friends who have been assaulted/discriminated against to different degrees for their perceived homosexuality. Usually men who don't conform to rigid gender roles by having long hair, or dressing androgynously. Their sexuality is, of course, irrelevant...but the perception of it has made them targets.
@tiredfairy: I also appreciate the inclusion of perceived sexual orientation. I imagine it's not the same as being bashed for actually being homosexual but it all comes back to homophobia, the hate and fear of gender performance and sexuality that is non-heteronormative.
Shortly after this, a group of four grown men drive into the Castro district of SF looking for a gay man to beat up. They saw my friend, who weighed 130 pounds, walking down the street, and pulled over to beat him badly enough to land him a couple days in the hospital. Total evil cowards.
I remember when this happened because it was my twelfth birthday. I had never met a gay person and had only ever been in tiny Catholic schools, and I'm ashamed to say that my first thoughts were something like "Whatever, gay people don't matter."
And the more I heard about the details of the case, the more horrified I was, and I realized that stuff like this should never, ever happen to anyone. I just hope his story can continue to change people's minds like it did mine.
I remember listening to all of the details of this awful murder come out during the trial. I vividly remember the interview of the police officer who was the first responder. She rode with him in the ambulance and tried to comfort him, saying "Baby boy, I'm so sorry this happened to you."
Aw, my grandmother used to whip out her teeth, too, just to make me laugh. She didn't have a gun, though, but she did wear mid-heel pumps and rolled her stockings down below her knees. She was a hoot.
@GeorgeFayne: What was it you didn't like about it, out of curiosity?
No idea if you're the only person who hated it-- I found it a very interesting story (but can't say I was blown away by the writing quality or style), and rather eye-opening.
ETA: Hopefully that didn't come off as judgy or anything-- usually it's me who is the only person who hates something, so I was just genuinely curious!
@formergr: It's been a while since I tried reading it, but I found all the characters (well, "characters") wholly unsympathetic, and the writing style/quality basically absent. To me, it was a book that had already been written several dozen times over, and better.
@GeorgeFayne: A friend made me borrow it and I had really low expectations based on her tastes which were of the Dan Brown area of the book store. So it was better than I thought it would be but overall read like an Oprah book that I'd already read before.
@GeorgeFayne: I felt disconnected from some of the characters as well. Specifically the parent's for abandoning their children- I found their behaviors difficult to appreciate. However, I would still reccomend this book to others.
@FrostyTempleton: I doubt there was. Do not underestimate just how much life and people can suck
I'm sure there was some exaggeration, as there is in any memoir or biography, but I think the majority of it was truthful
It's not like A Million Little Pieces, which I never understood how anyone didn't notice was full of glaring medical impossibilities
@colormeroutine: Wait, you mean novocaine and narcotics aren't the same?? Ohhh.
Yeah, I read that for my book club before it all came out about it being made up, and was the only one who A) hated it, and B) was confused at some of the inconsistencies and "science" in it.
@GeorgeFayne: My mom read it last Christmas and would not stop complaining about how attrociously and impossibly untrue it sounded. She read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn immediately after as an intellectual antidote.
I see publishers have learned their lessons: memoirs sell very well, but often have pesky made up things in them. I know, we'll market them as "true-life" novels, and no one will be able to complain. Take that, Oprah!
@jengrrrl: My family has some stories that have been passed on as true but may not be and there's no real way to prove it anymore. Like did great-grandma really abandon her first family, including five kids, because they were Mormon and she felt oppressed until the Love of Her Life came and set her free? Or maybe she was just a deadbeat and it's the story she told to make herself feel better. We'll never know so I can't tell it as straight-up truth but it might be. I can see a collection of family stories like that being sold as "true life novel."
Then you have something like "What is the What" where David Eggers claims everything couldn't be verified so they are calling it a novel, but you can't help but think about how other Sudanese refugees have flat-out memoirs. Are the other memoirs wrong? Or did Eggers just have too much trouble with the form's restrictions so he decided to fictionalize the protagonist's story to make it more interesting and read better?
If you're still claiming everything is true, you shouldn't be able to classify it as fiction. I think.
I do find it irritatingly pretentious when conservative Christians attest there is something special about them believing in Jesus and act like they're a minority, in a country where they so clearly have religious privilege to the extent that every viable presidential candidate has been a member of their religion or at least forced to fake it. But even as a secular liberal, I was shocked when I started college last year (I'm in a school in Baltimore, with lots of uber-liberal New Yorkers, Bostonians, and Californians) by how intolerant some on the left can be of their right-wing counterparts. I'd grown up around a mix of liberals and conservative evangelicals, and while my conservative friends would often argue with me over my beliefs we could still be friends after it was over and find things to discuss that we agreed on. My equally-liberal parents always had friends who were gun-toting, Fox-News-watching Bushies. But some "liberals" won't even give you the time of day if they perceive you as "redneck" or a "Jesus freak." And liberals who only grow-up around like-minded people can be just as ridiculously sheltered as conservatives who never experience other opinions; I remember stifling laughter at the girl from New York who attested that no one REALLY is against abortion, because everyone she knew would get an abortion if they got unexpectedly pregnant.
So I can really see how Bauer would have trouble fitting into the New York literary/artistic scene, when I've seen firsthand how judgmental people can be found on both sides of the aisle. And she hardly sounds like she's a fire-and-brimstone type; she just has strong beliefs and doesn't want to change them to fit in.
I will probably read this, if only as research for my own book proposal, which will also be a memoir that has to do with religion.
However, I do have to wonder about the narrative of the book. Usually what attracts people to memoirs is the promise of redemption or of some sort of transformation on a personal level. Good writing is necessary, of course, but there has to be something else to make it compelling.
The NYT ran an article about a similar memoir, which seems to be one about contentment. I just have to wonder, what possible story arc is there when your narrative is focused around trying to stay exactly the way you are.
09/03/09
Matt's funeral took place in my home town of Casper. The Westboro Baptist church flocked to the small episcopal church where the service was held, wielding their "God hates fags" signs. Anticipating this, many Casper residents also went to the churchyard. They stood side by side, and turned their backs on the Westboro demonstrators. It was something that moves me still to this day when I think about it.
In May of this year, nearly 11 years after Matt's death, our state's lone representative voted against the Matthew Shepard Act. While this only reaffirmed my poor opinion of Cynthia Lummis, it also draws into question what this will mean for Wyoming. And what it will say about us if she is reelected in 2010.
09/03/09
09/03/09
09/03/09
I also like the working "actual or perceived sexual orientation". While it's nowhere near the same, I have several friends who have been assaulted/discriminated against to different degrees for their perceived homosexuality. Usually men who don't conform to rigid gender roles by having long hair, or dressing androgynously. Their sexuality is, of course, irrelevant...but the perception of it has made them targets.
09/03/09
09/03/09
09/03/09
And the more I heard about the details of the case, the more horrified I was, and I realized that stuff like this should never, ever happen to anyone. I just hope his story can continue to change people's minds like it did mine.
09/03/09
That really does need to change immediately.
09/03/09
There are no words for this type of hatred.
09/03/09
That detail made me cry.
08/25/09
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08/25/09
No idea if you're the only person who hated it-- I found it a very interesting story (but can't say I was blown away by the writing quality or style), and rather eye-opening.
ETA: Hopefully that didn't come off as judgy or anything-- usually it's me who is the only person who hates something, so I was just genuinely curious!
08/25/09
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08/25/09
I'm sure there was some exaggeration, as there is in any memoir or biography, but I think the majority of it was truthful
It's not like A Million Little Pieces, which I never understood how anyone didn't notice was full of glaring medical impossibilities
08/25/09
Yeah, I read that for my book club before it all came out about it being made up, and was the only one who A) hated it, and B) was confused at some of the inconsistencies and "science" in it.
08/25/09
08/25/09
08/25/09
Then you have something like "What is the What" where David Eggers claims everything couldn't be verified so they are calling it a novel, but you can't help but think about how other Sudanese refugees have flat-out memoirs. Are the other memoirs wrong? Or did Eggers just have too much trouble with the form's restrictions so he decided to fictionalize the protagonist's story to make it more interesting and read better?
If you're still claiming everything is true, you shouldn't be able to classify it as fiction. I think.
08/01/09
So I can really see how Bauer would have trouble fitting into the New York literary/artistic scene, when I've seen firsthand how judgmental people can be found on both sides of the aisle. And she hardly sounds like she's a fire-and-brimstone type; she just has strong beliefs and doesn't want to change them to fit in.
07/30/09
However, I do have to wonder about the narrative of the book. Usually what attracts people to memoirs is the promise of redemption or of some sort of transformation on a personal level. Good writing is necessary, of course, but there has to be something else to make it compelling.
The NYT ran an article about a similar memoir, which seems to be one about contentment. I just have to wonder, what possible story arc is there when your narrative is focused around trying to stay exactly the way you are.
07/29/09