Abstract
<p> <italic>The Lamentations</italic> is an exploration of the history of queer suicide and a eulogy for those who have died. Written in the form of a requiem, the book traces the emergence of the archetype of queer suicide in film, theatre, literature, and other aesthetic forms, and follows its changing meanings throughout the twentieth- and early twenty-first centuries. The book also seeks and recovers stories about the suicides of queer people from numerous sources—including newspaper stories, obituaries, case studies, and other genres—throughout the last several hundred years, following the ways in which queer suicide has played a mournful accompanying role in life stories involving loneliness, shame, isolation, familial and social alienation, religious and political persecution, arrest and incarceration, blackmail and forced outing, and many other markers of marginalization and oppression. <italic>The Lamentations</italic> is also a book about those who remain after a suicide has taken place, and the particular forms of mourning that follow in its wake. Interwoven with the stories of many people who have chosen to die, Anderson writes about four deaths spread throughout his own life: his grandfather, two of his earliest queer friends, and his best friend in adulthood. He writes about the archives that have structured the difficult process of grieving these losses, archives that describe both the vibrance of queer life and the overwhelming losses occasioned by queer death.</p>