Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta: A novel

(Paperback)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

'There's no one quite like Carlotta Mercedes, the transgender Black Colombian heroine - no, star - of the second novel by Hannaham.' -THE OBSERVER

When Carlotta Mercedes was pulled into a robbery gone wrong, she still went by the name she was born with. But not long after her conviction, she began to live as a woman, an embrace of selfhood that prison authorities rejected, keeping Carlotta trapped in an all-male cell block, abused by both inmates and guards.

Over twenty years later, Carlotta is granted conditional freedom and returns to a much-changed Brooklyn, where she struggles to reconcile with a family reluctant to accept her identity, and to avoid any minor parole infraction that might get her consigned back to lockup.

Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta sweeps the reader through seemingly every street of Brooklyn, much as Joyce's Ulysses does through Dublin. Hannaham introduces a cast of unforgettable characters even as it challenges us to confront the glaring injustices of a society and prison system that continues to punish people long after their time has been served.

Reviews

'"Carlotta is irrepressible. Don't let the title of this wondrous novel fool you. Hannaham cares deeply about Carlotta."' - JOHN IRVING, THE NEW YORK TIMES

'"Carlotta is more than one to remember, she's a treasure."' - Paul Beatty, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sellout

'"As if by means of some mashup of Hubert Selby, Darius James, and Bruce Wagner, Hannaham's tripwire provocations and dazzling verbal fireworks give way to a fathomless tenderness and remorse. His Carlotta is spectacularly Brooklyn and devastatingly human all the way down to the bone."' - Jonatham Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn

'"An exuberant odyssey. In James Hannaham's breakneck novel, a trans woman returns from prison to a New York she barely recognises... Carlotta's passion for life is unstoppable... [Her] charm and zest allows the reader at times to forget the horrors she has lived through."' - The Guardian

'"There's no one quite like Carlotta Mercedes, the transgender Black Colombian heroine - no, star - of the second novel by James Hannaham."' - The Observer

'' -

Author Bio

James Hannaham is the award-winning author of Delicious Foods, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. It was selected for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program, the New York Timess and Washington Posts 100 Notable Books of 2015, and was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize. His debut God Says No, was honoured by the American Library Associations Stonewall Book Awards.