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

Description

Following her involvement in a liquor store robbery during her youth, Carlotta Mercedes has been in a men's prison for twenty-three years. Now she has finally been released and is heading home to the newly gentrified Brooklyn, re-entering the orbit of her ambivalent son and adjusting to life as a quasi-free woman, restricted by parole rulings and the hostility of contemporary New York. Loosely inspired by James Joyce's Ulysses, Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta is a stylish, inventive tale of belonging from the author of the PEN/Faulkner Award winner Delicious Foods. 'Hannaham's prose is gloriously dense and full of elegant observations.' - Roxanne Gay

James Hannaham is the author of the novels God Says No, a Stonewall Book Award finalist, and Delicious Foods, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize and Dayton Literary Peace Prize finalist as well as a New York Times Notable Book. He lives in Brooklyn, where he teaches at the Pratt Institute.

'Hannaham's buoyant sophomore novel introduces us to the unforgettable Carlotta Mercedes, an Afro-Latinx trans woman released from a men's prison after serving two decades... Over the course of one zany Fourth of July weekend, Carlotta descends into Brooklyn's roiling underbelly on a quest to stand in her truth. Angry, saucy, and joyful, Carlotta is a true survivor-one whose story shines a disinfecting light on the injustices of our world.' - Esquire '[Carlotta] the bold, brash, and bitingly hilarious protagonist, seeks to come to terms with the Fort Greene, Brooklyn that she left behind. Hannaham's novel has drawn comparisons to Ulysses with its style, specificity, and snapshot framing.' - Laura Zornosa, Time 'We were big fans of James Hannaham's previous novel Delicious Foods ... The long wait for his follow-up is finally over and it's a doozy: a raucous social comedy that takes on our carceral system, the poor treatment of trans people, and capitalist failings in one unmissable package.' -Chicago Review of Books 'Timely, gripping, and compellingly written... this book had me from the first page... Hannaham introduces us to the distinct narrative voice of Carlotta, who's willing to cut through all the noise to tell her truth in her own distinctly hilarious way... This is a book that deserves to be read by anyone who's interested in how public policy affects the everyday lives of marginalized communities in America.' - David Vogel, Buzzfeed 'Like the transformed city she navigates to great comic effect, Carlotta is irrepressible. She endures. James Hannaham won multiple accolades for his previous outing, Delicious Foods; with Carlotta, it's a good bet more are on the way.' - Cat Auer, AV Club '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, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sellout '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, New York Times bestselling 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-winning author of Homeland Elegies 'Carlotta is a vision to behold as she attempts reentry into a now-unfamiliar world. In Hannaham's hands, this theme shimmers with humor, pathos, and that kind of queer energy that readers love.' - Jim Piechota, Edge Media 'Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta expertly balances the seriousness of the criminal legal system with the irreverence, absurdity, humor, and healing connections of Carlotta's world.' - Sarah Neilson, them.com 'James Hannaham's Carlotta is an astonishing act of empathy and identification, which will shake readers out of their torpor and remind them that fiction at its highest is a form of metempsychosis. Carlotta steps off the page and into your room, and stands there, implacable, educating you on her terms.' - Lucy Sante, author of Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York 'Engrossing... A brash, ambitious novel carried by an unforgettable narrator... in its day-in-the-life framing, hyperlocality, and rhetorical invention, [Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta] is also an homage to Ulysses... 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.' - Kirkus (starred review) 'Hannaham has created a gloriously original character with an unmistakable voice and an unforgettable story... Carlotta's journey from Ithaca, carrying her talisman, antagonizing a one-eyed man, and plunging into a drug-induced fever dream while seeking a lost son, echoes another linguistically brilliant novel, James Joyce's Ulysses.' - Booklist (starred review) 'This is the fastest, funniest, and most furious novel I've read in ages. In James Hannaham's blistering prose, his heroine's return from the American gulag to gentrified Brooklyn becomes an odyssey through the absurd, cruel, and sometimes miraculous condition of being poor, Black, and trans in a system and a city determined to erase the Carlottas of this world. The book is a tour de force of a spirit undefeated by this journey.' - Adam Haslett, author of the national bestseller and Pulitzer Prize finalist Imagine Me Gone 'As if by means of some mashup of Hubert Selby, Darius James, and Bruce Wagner, James 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.' - Jonathan Lethem, New York Times bestselling author of Motherless Brooklyn '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, Electric Lit Praise for Hannaham's Delicious Foods: 'A completely unforgettable, original, and singular novel by a brave, exciting new writer.' - Tayari Jones, author of Silver Sparrow and An American Marriage 'A writer of major importance...'- New York Times Book Review '...an epic and devastating hero's journey... [It] is the result of a master storyteller at the top of his game.' -Buzzfeed Books