Description

The humorous and heart-wrenching story of a woman’s re-entry into life on the outside after twenty years in incarceration, told over one whirlwind Fourth of July weekend.

“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.

Publisher Review

"An early contender for best title of the year." * Literary Hub * "Carlotta is irrepressible. Don't let the title of this wondrous novel fool you. Hannaham cares deeply about Carlotta. From a mash-up of perspectives, he writes like a guardian angel. Or - as our narrator says of Carlotta, when she's feeling elated - "like a drag queen doing a layup." * JOHN IRVING, THE NEW YORK TIMES * "Lovingly linguistic and equal parts Zora Neale Hurston, Chester Himes, and the now mythical Stagg R. Leigh, this refreshingly cool look at the new New York through old eyes is the Blackest book I've read in years. Carlotta is more than one to remember, she's a treasure." Paul Beatty * 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 * "A writer of major importance." * New York Times Book Review * "Superb... Carlotta deserves a lot of things society rarely provides to women like her-among them, a role in great fiction. Hannaham gives Carlotta her due. A brash, ambitious novel carried by an unforgettable narrator." * Kirkus Reviews (starred) * "Hannaham's latest novel is at once irreverently funny and devastatingly sad, a quixotic tale about the queerness of missed time; how, for the most marginalized, the shackles of the past and uncertain promises of the future make dwelling in the present seem impossible." * Michelle Hart, author of We Do What we Do in the Dark * "Maybe the comic novel is the best way to explore some of the least funny aspects of our society. Maybe the justice system is so immoral, the forces of capitalism so relentless, the treatment of some of our citizens so indefensible, that we have no choice but to turn heartbreak into hilarity, to laugh. Carlotta is a beautiful, unsettling book. The title is a trick; James Hannaham gives a shit, and so should everyone else." * Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind * "Borne along by a riotous current of verbal ingenuity, James Hannaham's new novel is-like its endlessly vibrant protagonist-a marvel of invention. There wasn't a page that didn't surprise me. By its end, this book had conjured a depth of identification with its heroine that I was not prepared for. Utterly brilliant." * Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize winner for Homeland Elegies * "Hannaham's prose is gloriously dense and full of elegant observations that might go unmade by a lesser writer. He creates full-bodied characters. Even the minor figures are drawn with subtle details." * Roxane Gay (on (on Hannaham's previous novel Delicious Foods) * "A completely unforgettable, original, and singular novel by a brave, exciting new writer." * Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage (on Delicious Foods) * "James Hannaham's new novel is a tour de force. Gripping, haunting, and deeply moving, it beguiles the reader with the urgent immediacy of its characters' lives, while also reverberating with universal themes of freedom and enslavement, love and survival." * Jennifer Egan (on Delicious Foods) * "Hannaham's stimulating work moves like a plane in tailspin, tossing off flashes of wisdom as the ground below gets ever closer. It's a ride worth taking." * Publisher's Weekly * "Hannaham is not only creative or stunningly gifted or intellectual or supremely original, but all those distinctions at once." * The Washington Post * "[Hannaham] is serious about investigating the long-term effects of internalized racism, and the despair that prevents people from helping themselves... A sharp critique of the American belief that you can do anything as long as you work hard." * Entertainment Weekly *