Description

You’ve fought and you’ve run away.
You’ve danced with other Black queer bodies until sunrise.
Sometimes you wanted to be caught and sometimes you wanted to be held.
With all that you’ve endured, you are nothing less than miraculous.

From choirboy to drag act, grandson to mentor, poet to lover, Dean Atta has played many roles in his life. In this formally inventive, candid and courageous book, he explores what he has carried in his body: wins and losses, shame and pride, pain and joy. Dean also investigates how radical self-acceptance and a willingness to abide with discomfort open up the possibility of a life lived beyond definition: a person unlimited.

Publisher Review

Such a brave and important book — SALENA GODDEN Years ago within living memory this book would have been illegal and Dean could have been imprisoned for writing it. All memoir is a witness statement. Dean Atta, speak your truth and say it loud — LEMN SISSAY A poet’s moving personal testimony of a Black queer life well lived — PETER TATCHELL Healing, sensuous and compellingly insightful — ALICE HILLER This is a tour de force of a book. It takes guts to bear it all like this. Dean does not mince words. In parts I laughed, albeit in gallows humour, was shocked to my core, shed tears and discovered hairs in parts of my body I never knew existed. Person Unlimited is not for the fainthearted; it is brutally honest. It is a testimonial of the fine writer Dean Atta — ERIC NGALLE CHARLES Praise for Dean Atta: Dean Atta’s poetry is as honest as truth itself. He follows no trend; he seeks no favours . . . Beyond black, beyond white, beyond straight, beyond gay, so I say. Love your eyes over these words of truth. You will be uplifted — BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH Dean Atta is man on a mission — TOM ROBINSON * * BBC 6 Music * * The Gil Scott Heron of his generation — CHARLIE DARK I can do nothing but take my hat off to Dean Atta for speaking out, saying what he believed, and doing it so effectively and powerfully that countless people heard it who would never normally have done so * * Huffington Post * *