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Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta
In this “dangerously hilarious” novel ( Los Angeles Time s), a trans woman reenters life on the outside after more than twenty years in a men’s prison, over one consequential Fourth of July weekend—from the author of the PEN/Faulkner Award winner Delicious Foods .
Carlotta Mercedes has been misunderstood her entire life. When she was pulled into a robbery gone wrong, she still went by the name she’d grown up with in Fort Greene, Brooklyn—before it gentrified. But not long after her conviction, she took the name Carlotta and 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, and often placed in solitary.
In her fifth appearance before the parole board, Carlotta is at last granted conditional freedom and returns to a much-changed New York City. Over a whirlwind Fourth of July weekend, she struggles to reconcile with the son she left behind, to reunite with a family reluctant to accept her true identity, and to avoid any minor parole infraction that might get her consigned back to lockup.
Written with the same astonishing verve of Delicious Foods , which dazzled critics and readers alike, 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. The novel sings with brio and ambition, delivering a fantastically entertaining read and a cast of unforgettable characters even as it challenges us to confront the glaring injustices of a prison system that continues to punish people long after their time has been served.
Carlotta Mercedes has been misunderstood her entire life. When she was pulled into a robbery gone wrong, she still went by the name she’d grown up with in Fort Greene, Brooklyn—before it gentrified. But not long after her conviction, she took the name Carlotta and 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, and often placed in solitary.
In her fifth appearance before the parole board, Carlotta is at last granted conditional freedom and returns to a much-changed New York City. Over a whirlwind Fourth of July weekend, she struggles to reconcile with the son she left behind, to reunite with a family reluctant to accept her true identity, and to avoid any minor parole infraction that might get her consigned back to lockup.
Written with the same astonishing verve of Delicious Foods , which dazzled critics and readers alike, 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. The novel sings with brio and ambition, delivering a fantastically entertaining read and a cast of unforgettable characters even as it challenges us to confront the glaring injustices of a prison system that continues to punish people long after their time has been served.
300 pages, Paperback
First published June 28, 2022
334 people are currently reading
11826 people want to read
About the author
James Hannaham
15 books349 followersJames Hannaham is the author of the novel Delicious Foods, winner of the 2016 PEN/Faulkner Award in Fiction, the Hurston Wright Legacy Award, and the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His first novel, God Says No, was published by McSweeney's in 2009 and was a finalist for a Lambda Book Award, a semifinalist for a VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and was named an honor book by the American Library Association's Stonewall Book Awards. His short fiction has appeared in BOMB, The Literary Review, Nerve.com, Open City, and several anthologies. He has written for the Village Voice, Spin, Blender, Out, Us, New York Magazine, The Barnes & Noble Review and The New York Times Magazine. Once upon a time in 2008, he was a staff writer at Salon.com. He has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, and Fundación Valparaíso and a NYFFA Fellowship. He teaches in the Department of Writing at the Pratt Institute. In November 2021, Soft Skull published Pilot Impostor, a multi-genre book of responses to poems by Fernando Pessoa, and in 2022, Little, Brown will release his third novel, Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 627 reviews
November 17, 2022
gonna shove this book down the throats of every fucker i see
September 23, 2022
Carlotta, formerly known as Dustin, returns home on parole after spending twenty years in a men’s prison. Her story is achingly sad but she is resilient and it’s impossible not to root for her. She’s so aware of the absurdity of the cruelties she suffers. It’s almost as if she can convince herself she’s taking pratfalls in her own weird sitcom, rather than living a life nearly bereft of hope or joy. The scenes are punctuated with a sudden, starburst humor—the kind of humor that makes you eventually want to cry, because it’s so biting, and so ruthlessly uninterested in making you see the pain less clearly. The writing is gorgeous. The voice requires concentration. I could say the story is Joycean, but only if Leopold Bloom were a Black/Colombian trans woman who is too “pee shy” to urinate in front of her parole officer and that is the least of her problems.
August 23, 2022
Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta is an odyssey of one trans woman’s life as she transitions from being incarcerated to being released.
Carlotta doesn’t have high hopes for her next meeting with the parole board. Much to her surprise, the board grants her release with conditions. Having been incarcerated for over twenty years, NYC looks a lot different than it did previously.
Over the Fourth of July weekend, Carlotta wishes to reconcile with her son; gain her family’s acceptance; try to avoid breaking any of her conditions for parole.
This is an utterly original story with an unforgettable main character. The writing style is quite unique and allows the reader to enter Carlotta’s mind. It frequently switches from third to first-person without warning, sometimes in the same sentence.
While the story goes from one chaotic scene to the next, it also reveals the harsh realities of the justice system and how difficult it can be to escape its reach. Carlotta is an immensely positive and joyful person but has dealt with a lot of trauma while being incarcerated, which she reflects on throughout the novel.
I highly recommend this novel. And now I’ll check out the author’s backlist.
CW: SA.
Thank you to Little, Brown and Company for providing an arc via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
https://booksandwheels.com
Carlotta doesn’t have high hopes for her next meeting with the parole board. Much to her surprise, the board grants her release with conditions. Having been incarcerated for over twenty years, NYC looks a lot different than it did previously.
Over the Fourth of July weekend, Carlotta wishes to reconcile with her son; gain her family’s acceptance; try to avoid breaking any of her conditions for parole.
This is an utterly original story with an unforgettable main character. The writing style is quite unique and allows the reader to enter Carlotta’s mind. It frequently switches from third to first-person without warning, sometimes in the same sentence.
While the story goes from one chaotic scene to the next, it also reveals the harsh realities of the justice system and how difficult it can be to escape its reach. Carlotta is an immensely positive and joyful person but has dealt with a lot of trauma while being incarcerated, which she reflects on throughout the novel.
I highly recommend this novel. And now I’ll check out the author’s backlist.
CW: SA.
Thank you to Little, Brown and Company for providing an arc via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
https://booksandwheels.com
June 2, 2023
This is a poignant novel from James Hannaham, a weekend romp through 2010s Brooklyn with the newly paroled Carlotta Mercedes. Hannaham is searing in his examination of structural injustice, illustrating how people who are Black, trans, women, and formerly incarcerated face barriers to navigating a world made for the privilege of others. In addition to the paperback, I dabbled with the audio version where Carlotta is performed by the brilliant Flame Monroe. I've seen some trepidation about this, a book written by a cis man that lives so much in the head of a trans character. While I understand some reticence on that front, I can't imagine anyone in 2023 reading this in lieu of trans writers. By all means, read trans writers. But it's okay to read this one too.
January 28, 2025
this book follows carlotta mercedes, a black/colombian trans woman who has just been released from a men’s prison where she spent over twenty years. set over a fourth of july weekend, carlotta reenters life in a drastically-changed new york city, attempting to reconnect with her family/friends on the outside while also trying to stick to the conditions of her parole.
the novel is so uniquely written, hannaham often switches POV within one sentence and completely turns the rules of grammar and spelling on their head, making for a more compelling and immersive read. carlotta has one of the strongest character voices i’ve read in a long time, and it’s really her wry, buoyant narration that keeps the book ticking along. the novel is full of biting humour but also doesn’t shy away from its inherent bleakness, there are many passages of carlotta recounting her time in prison that are harrowing to read.
it’s a powerful story touching on racism, transphobia, misogynoir, the injustices of the prison system, and the violence enacted onto incarcerated people, especially trans people. in the wake of donald trump’s (incredibly dangerous) executive order to move trans women into men’s prisons, there’s never been a more pertinent time to read books and stories like this.
the novel is so uniquely written, hannaham often switches POV within one sentence and completely turns the rules of grammar and spelling on their head, making for a more compelling and immersive read. carlotta has one of the strongest character voices i’ve read in a long time, and it’s really her wry, buoyant narration that keeps the book ticking along. the novel is full of biting humour but also doesn’t shy away from its inherent bleakness, there are many passages of carlotta recounting her time in prison that are harrowing to read.
it’s a powerful story touching on racism, transphobia, misogynoir, the injustices of the prison system, and the violence enacted onto incarcerated people, especially trans people. in the wake of donald trump’s (incredibly dangerous) executive order to move trans women into men’s prisons, there’s never been a more pertinent time to read books and stories like this.
November 14, 2022
This novel about a trans woman (she transitioned in prison in Ithaca) coming home to Brooklyn after 22 years away starts like gangbusters. Funny. Real. I laughed a lot.
I read it for my book club (all white women) and one mentioned that it was a challenging read, so she opted for an audiobook.
Once into the book, I assumed her challenge was because it was written mostly in Ebonics (Black urban English) with an idiosyncratic use or nonuse of punctuation. Sometimes it shifted from first to third person and none of this bothered me for the first half of the book. I was right there inside protagonist Carlotta Mercedes’s head. But suddenly, a little more than 40 percent into it, the shifts from inside this wildly wonderful trans woman’s first-person head to standard English third-person narrative (sans punctuation, sans paragraph break) felt awkward, tedious, and just weird. I became increasingly impatient because it began to seem messy. There are many long examples of this, but here are a couple of short bits:
The book is wonderful in character and invention, but the shifting voice took the steam out of it and I found myself reading in my “editor’s head” (not a lot of fun when I’m not getting paid). It almost felt as if the author got tired of writing from Carlotta’s perspective, so he shifted to traditional third-person narrative. Not only that, but the last two chapters, a fury of Mercedes’s stream of consciousness, were absolutely exhausting. I slogged through, at least hoping for a plot surprise from two obvious set-ups (a drug test result that didn’t make sense and promised to be explained, and a character who seemed destined to own Mercedes’s house through a reverse mortgage). Both of those set-ups were dropped with no surprising resolution.
Even what should have been highly emotional—Carlotta’s recounting of events that had happened to her in prison—droned like a researched report.
I don’t know if there was a problem with the writing or if, mid-book, I’d had my suspension of disbelief destroyed to the point where I simply didn’t believe what I was reading anymore.
In short, I lost my connection to the story in the second half of the book, despite its colorful character and exciting voice, and because this is not an editing job where I’d be obligated to go through the book to discover reasons, I’ll simply leave the causes for my disconnection and disappointment ambiguous.
I read it for my book club (all white women) and one mentioned that it was a challenging read, so she opted for an audiobook.
Once into the book, I assumed her challenge was because it was written mostly in Ebonics (Black urban English) with an idiosyncratic use or nonuse of punctuation. Sometimes it shifted from first to third person and none of this bothered me for the first half of the book. I was right there inside protagonist Carlotta Mercedes’s head. But suddenly, a little more than 40 percent into it, the shifts from inside this wildly wonderful trans woman’s first-person head to standard English third-person narrative (sans punctuation, sans paragraph break) felt awkward, tedious, and just weird. I became increasingly impatient because it began to seem messy. There are many long examples of this, but here are a couple of short bits:
[Third-person narrative:]As she scoped right, into the kitchen and out to the backyard, the crowd became more female and food-focused, and the dance music overwhelmed the TV. She saw deep aluminum tubs piled with fried chicken, barbecued chicken, potato salad, probably ribs, collard greens, corn bread, and something she couldn’t see—okra? [First-person narrative:]At least I ain’t spent none of my cash down at fucking Junior’s. What I was thinking? Look like I could get seven lunches here for free if I wanna—which I do. . . . (137)I could imagine an actor inserting punctuation and paragraph breaks via pauses and voice changes that are not in the written text. This might make the book clearer, and I’ll be curious to hear from my book club members who listened to the audio.
[Third-person narrative] Somehow Carlotta hadn’t caught anyone’s attention either, even when she climbed onto the fire escape ladder, which trembled violently and could have collapsed as she descended [No punctuation, switch to first-person narrative] An maybe kilt my own ass too. But din’t nobody pay no mind. That’s a sign you got a good-ass party goin! [Switch back to third person] Another ambulance shrieked through the neighborhood, and Carlotta paused to listen, worried that it was screaming about her future. (251)
The book is wonderful in character and invention, but the shifting voice took the steam out of it and I found myself reading in my “editor’s head” (not a lot of fun when I’m not getting paid). It almost felt as if the author got tired of writing from Carlotta’s perspective, so he shifted to traditional third-person narrative. Not only that, but the last two chapters, a fury of Mercedes’s stream of consciousness, were absolutely exhausting. I slogged through, at least hoping for a plot surprise from two obvious set-ups (a drug test result that didn’t make sense and promised to be explained, and a character who seemed destined to own Mercedes’s house through a reverse mortgage). Both of those set-ups were dropped with no surprising resolution.
Even what should have been highly emotional—Carlotta’s recounting of events that had happened to her in prison—droned like a researched report.
I don’t know if there was a problem with the writing or if, mid-book, I’d had my suspension of disbelief destroyed to the point where I simply didn’t believe what I was reading anymore.
In short, I lost my connection to the story in the second half of the book, despite its colorful character and exciting voice, and because this is not an editing job where I’d be obligated to go through the book to discover reasons, I’ll simply leave the causes for my disconnection and disappointment ambiguous.
May 20, 2023
A rollercoaster ride with hot mess Carlotta Mercedes, a trans woman on the first day of her release after 21 years in prison. One minute she's living the wackiest of I Love Lucy episodes, the next she is remembering the horrors of daily rape and living in solitary confinement in prison. Her memories aren't graphic or detailed though - she's mostly hardened and matter-of-fact about it, since letting emotion out is a sure path to insanity. The title is something she says herself at one point in the book, and it pretty much informs her 'suck it up' philosophy, and its corollary, 'stay true to yourself'.
Half way through the book I realized that Hannaham is doing an amazing and tricky thing: Carlotta's voice (sampled in the title) mingles seemingly indiscriminately with the narrator's 3rd person, standard diction - sometimes even passing back and forth in a single sentence or thought. And its done so deftly I didn't even notice! It works brilliantly to simultaneously put us inside Carlotta's head and see her from the outside, through the empathetic voice of the narrator. I'm sure if I read this book again specifically to follow the two voices as they dovetail, I'd see a lot more purpose behind it.
Here's an example of the narrator and Carlotta tag teaming a description of her public defender's reaction to an angry witness at her parole hearing: ".. a pale, mousy girl with big glasses who looked like a PhD candidate in macrame. Made the poor thing spaz and knock her coffee all over her papers Which show you how good the bitch had her shit together not at all." They can be a very funny pair.
***I listened to it a second time around, thanks to the advice of Nancy Hirstein in the comments. Great advice, Flame Monroe nails Carlotta :)
Half way through the book I realized that Hannaham is doing an amazing and tricky thing: Carlotta's voice (sampled in the title) mingles seemingly indiscriminately with the narrator's 3rd person, standard diction - sometimes even passing back and forth in a single sentence or thought. And its done so deftly I didn't even notice! It works brilliantly to simultaneously put us inside Carlotta's head and see her from the outside, through the empathetic voice of the narrator. I'm sure if I read this book again specifically to follow the two voices as they dovetail, I'd see a lot more purpose behind it.
Here's an example of the narrator and Carlotta tag teaming a description of her public defender's reaction to an angry witness at her parole hearing: ".. a pale, mousy girl with big glasses who looked like a PhD candidate in macrame. Made the poor thing spaz and knock her coffee all over her papers Which show you how good the bitch had her shit together not at all." They can be a very funny pair.
***I listened to it a second time around, thanks to the advice of Nancy Hirstein in the comments. Great advice, Flame Monroe nails Carlotta :)
January 9, 2025
I read this one an eternity ago and liked it so much that I did what I do best - never bothered to review it until I put Delicious Foods on hold at the library and the software was like “hey girl, maybe you’d like to read this book that is currently available” . . . that I effing received a reader copy of!
Alright, so the story here is about Carlotta, a transwoman who has FINALLY been paroled from prison after going before the board five times. This is the story of Carlotta’s first weekend out, which just so happens to be over the Fourth of July holiday.
Ignore that ugly ass cover and just trust that this is FRESH and funny and sometimes a little sad and heartwarming and allllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll the feelings. I loved it and I’m sorry I did it such a disservice by failing to review it before now.
Thank you to the publisher for providing a review copy in exchange for my honest opinion.
Alright, so the story here is about Carlotta, a transwoman who has FINALLY been paroled from prison after going before the board five times. This is the story of Carlotta’s first weekend out, which just so happens to be over the Fourth of July holiday.
Ignore that ugly ass cover and just trust that this is FRESH and funny and sometimes a little sad and heartwarming and allllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll the feelings. I loved it and I’m sorry I did it such a disservice by failing to review it before now.
Thank you to the publisher for providing a review copy in exchange for my honest opinion.
March 8, 2023
while i feel that trans people should be the ones writing trans stories, this novel wasn’t nearly as transphobic as i was expecting. carlotta mercedes is released from prison after 22 years and is taking control of her life once more. she’s tough as nails and doesn’t take anyone’s shit, but she also knows that the world is against her.
my main issue with this novel is the rapid change of point of view. i wish this was entirely first person, written from carlotta’s perspective. the best moments of this novel are when you listen to her voice and she drops intense truth onto you — and as a trans person i felt moved by her advice and her observations about the world.
my main issue with this novel is the rapid change of point of view. i wish this was entirely first person, written from carlotta’s perspective. the best moments of this novel are when you listen to her voice and she drops intense truth onto you — and as a trans person i felt moved by her advice and her observations about the world.
May 18, 2024
Carlotta, we really want to care about your story, but you’ve got all the emotional depth of a kiddie pool.
☆☆(2 stars)
Too much telling. Not enough showing.
I was really let down by this novel. It had so much potential but fell short. Carlotta and Ibe could have worked on their relationship, but they didn’t. We missed out on seeing what happens between Frenzy and Carlotta now that she’s out of prison. There should have been more scenes with Carlotta and her family, but there weren’t. The book doesn't stick to a clear plot and feels rushed, like a Tyler Perry movie happening over just two days.
I gave it two stars instead of one because it had some funny moments, but overall, it was too lackluster. Without the audiobook, the sudden switches between third person and first person mid-sentence with no punctuation were hard to follow.
It wasn’t boring, but it lacked character connection and a solid plot. It just didn't have what a good novel needs.
☆☆(2 stars)
Too much telling. Not enough showing.
I was really let down by this novel. It had so much potential but fell short. Carlotta and Ibe could have worked on their relationship, but they didn’t. We missed out on seeing what happens between Frenzy and Carlotta now that she’s out of prison. There should have been more scenes with Carlotta and her family, but there weren’t. The book doesn't stick to a clear plot and feels rushed, like a Tyler Perry movie happening over just two days.
I gave it two stars instead of one because it had some funny moments, but overall, it was too lackluster. Without the audiobook, the sudden switches between third person and first person mid-sentence with no punctuation were hard to follow.
It wasn’t boring, but it lacked character connection and a solid plot. It just didn't have what a good novel needs.
January 13, 2023
Hilarious and harrowing.
March 3, 2023
When we first meet the heroine of James Hannaham’s Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta, she is preparing for an interview with the New York State Board of Parole, seeking release from Ithaca men’s penitentiary, where she has been doing time for 22 years on a crime she never committed. She has been having second thoughts about the prospect of ‘re-entering society’ – the same term that, she notes, is used for people returning home from prison as well as from outer space – and confides in her lover and fellow inmate, only for the latter to scoff at her: “Y’all females is all the same.” But there is nobody quite like Carlotta Mercedes, and there are no stories quite like her incredible odyssey of transitioning from unjust incarceration to a life of freedom.
However, freedom has its costs, and for a Black Colombian transwoman accused – however wrongly – of robbery and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, the costs are all the more. Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta chronicles the first 48 hours of its heroine’s homecoming to a wildly gentrified Brooklyn, deploying her unique perspective to throw into relief the manifold un-freedoms and injustices of a world most of us inhabit without so much as flinching. By thus following a character-in-flux through a series of unfortunate but systemically produced events, Hannaham – who received the PEN/Faulkner award for his 2015 novel, Delicious Foods – urges readers to give a shit about what happened to Carlotta, as well as all ‘others’, imprisoned by the state or otherwise, whom we are taught to overlook and forget about.
[This review originally appeared on Lucy Writers Platform].
Regardless of the anxieties she felt before her parole was granted, Carlotta is jubilant on her release five months later, busting into the Neutron Dance the moment she steps off the prison bus and smelling all the flowers she can on her way home. She arrives at her doorstep in Fort Greene giddy with excitement, expecting a warm welcome from the family and friends she has been longing to meet for over two decades. Instead, her welcome is lukewarm at best: nobody seems to have remembered that she was coming back out, and what she assumes to be a party being hosted in her honour turns out to be a ludicrously rave-like wake for one of her grandmother’s departed friends. Further, having transitioned during her time in confinement, she finds that barely anyone from her past recognises her; her once lively mother has retreated into her own prison of advanced dementia, her brothers are cold, and her son Ibe – the memory of whose young face helped her to sail through her dismay all these years – rejects both her love and her gender identity. In fact, the only one who is excited to see Carlotta is a young niece who was born during her time away at Ithaca and thus has no difficulty in acknowledging her womanhood.
In turn, Carlotta too finds her surroundings unrecognizable. The streets of her once poor, Black, working-class neighbourhood have transformed into a place where “linen-white mothers shoved strollers over the concrete, and Black women pushed yet more white children in other strollers,” which leads her to wonder: “Dag, what happened, did they cancel black chillun round here?”. The rest of the city is transformed, too: Times Square has been cleared of its “adult booth-stores and nasty theatres” in favour of a chaotic assemblage of skyscrapers and giant, flashy screens, and familiar mom-and-pop businesses have been replaced by upscale cupcake-only shops, ginormous supermarket chains “loved by liberal do-gooders with deep pockets,” and ridiculously expensive shoe stores that boast minimalistic décor and names like Amanda. In thus juxtaposing the family’s reception of Carlotta’s transition with such overwhelming changes as the gentrification that breaks down communities, the hyperconsumerism that forces people to lead lives they cannot afford, and the commodity fetishism that makes many treat their cars with more care than they have for other human beings, Hannaham cleverly pushes us to consider which of these is truly absurd and worthy of our horror.
As Carlotta goes about her first day as a free woman – hobbling about the city on the mismatched shoes she sneaks off of Amanda, wondering “if there were more stars in the sky than black gum spots on the pavements of Greater New York,” trying her best to avoid the boozy corridors of her own house so as not to violate the conditions of her release or fall out of favour with the parole officer, and navigating her employment options as an ex-convict – we are dipped into the stream of her ever-so-sassy consciousness and immersed in her eagerness to gulp down every drop of life. The text switches skillfully between her distinctive, charming voice and the standard English diction of its third-person narrator, often foregoing punctuation so as to engage the reader closely with Carlotta’s vertiginous experiences from both within and without, fleshing her out as an unforgettable character who is impossible not to laugh with and root for.
The above also means that we as readers come to feel for her deeply: while she is confident, outspoken, and funny, Carlotta is also scarred by her years in Ithaca, which “did not have a separate facility for people like her – hell, they had no vocabulary for people like her” and either put her in prolonged periods of solitary confinement ‘for her own protection’ or left her vulnerable to physical and sexual assault from inmates and guards (“There wasn’t never no guards to guard the guards”). Even when free from its conditions, she is still haunted and weighed down by her dark memories from the prison, unable to let down the defences that helped her survive it. Thus, though her narrative is full of zest, we sometimes catch her in waves of post-traumatic stress, perceiving dangers where there aren’t many and cautiously suppressing her surges of animal fear and the memories of abuse that “hollowed her out.” All that makes Carlotta paranoid is also what makes her so funny – indeed, her sense of humour is her manner of processing this trauma and escaping it: “The only way I know how to handle shit is to make a joke an keep movin on.” And move on she does: instead of allowing the reader to gloss over her suffering or pigeonhole her as a helpless victim, her comic manner lends a certain weight to the ideas she considers with seriousness, revealing the manner in which racial, sexual, and class-based prejudices operate and the thin line that keeps us from experiencing the terror these put her through.
As insurmountable as it seems, this line between freedom and control is really very thin, and Hannaham demonstrates this in the book with remarkable subtlety. While Carlotta’s harrowing experience of incarceration sheds light on the brutality of the criminal justice system, the story also makes use of her first brush with 21st century technology as a launchpad to examining its perilous implications for our ideas of freedom. One of the first things Carlotta takes pleasure in after getting out is the fact she is no longer being watched: “Nobody had her in their sights. No white guy’s eye, robot or human, eavesdropped on her.” Having been under constant surveillance for over two decades, she is horrified when she sees hordes of people walking down 42nd street with their faces glued to their screens and notices the pervasiveness of GPS systems, knowing what they could be used for. Later, joking with her childhood friend about the squalid conditions of correctional facilities – “Chile, they ain’t correcting no kinda nothing in no upstate prisons, but they sure know how to incorrect a motherfucker” – she notes the inhumane psychological torture meted to convicts, comparing it with ‘research’ that tortures animals in the name of science in order to “use that shit in the next war against people of color.”
Thus, while it may on the face of it appear to be concerned with the fate of a single character, Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta is a prismatic novel that works to reveal the systemic prejudices that colour all of society without resorting to didacticism, and whilst retaining so much heart. It is a story like none other, while also functioning as the author’s fantastic tribute to James Joyce’s Ulysses: Hannaham’s Carlotta breaks open the belly of Brooklyn with the same fervour and ferocity as Joyce’s Dublin, and in similarly making us privy to his protagonist’s most quotidian thoughts – her joy and pain, her empathy and judgement – he calls attention to other forms of marginalisation that bubble around her and around us: that of mixed-race people, immigrants, the disabled, the poor, the elderly, and all others in-between. Against all this – all the sorrow and displacement and disenchantment and injustice – echoes the protagonist’s rallying cry of self-assertion: “I just wanna be me, I just wanna be a human fuckin person like ev’-body else, without nobody telling me not to do who I am, holding me against my will, don’t wanna be no statistic or no tragedy or no symbol of nothing going wrong in society. Cause I’m what’s right, honey, I’m what’s going right.”
Hilarious, heartbreaking, and unapologetically original, Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta is a book not to be missed, the kind of ingenious tragicomedy that fills the reader up while also injecting us with a hunger for more: more freedom, more rights, more life. Though there is much struggle to come for Carlotta when we leave her, we cannot help but hold hands with her indomitable spirit, face the music, and say yes – “I’ma say Yes honey, I do, honey I’ma say Yes motherfucker” – to whatever it is that the future holds, because, at least, it exists, and so do we.
----
I highly recommend listening to this book in the audiobook format as narrated by James Hannaham and Flame Monroe.
However, freedom has its costs, and for a Black Colombian transwoman accused – however wrongly – of robbery and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, the costs are all the more. Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta chronicles the first 48 hours of its heroine’s homecoming to a wildly gentrified Brooklyn, deploying her unique perspective to throw into relief the manifold un-freedoms and injustices of a world most of us inhabit without so much as flinching. By thus following a character-in-flux through a series of unfortunate but systemically produced events, Hannaham – who received the PEN/Faulkner award for his 2015 novel, Delicious Foods – urges readers to give a shit about what happened to Carlotta, as well as all ‘others’, imprisoned by the state or otherwise, whom we are taught to overlook and forget about.
[This review originally appeared on Lucy Writers Platform].
Regardless of the anxieties she felt before her parole was granted, Carlotta is jubilant on her release five months later, busting into the Neutron Dance the moment she steps off the prison bus and smelling all the flowers she can on her way home. She arrives at her doorstep in Fort Greene giddy with excitement, expecting a warm welcome from the family and friends she has been longing to meet for over two decades. Instead, her welcome is lukewarm at best: nobody seems to have remembered that she was coming back out, and what she assumes to be a party being hosted in her honour turns out to be a ludicrously rave-like wake for one of her grandmother’s departed friends. Further, having transitioned during her time in confinement, she finds that barely anyone from her past recognises her; her once lively mother has retreated into her own prison of advanced dementia, her brothers are cold, and her son Ibe – the memory of whose young face helped her to sail through her dismay all these years – rejects both her love and her gender identity. In fact, the only one who is excited to see Carlotta is a young niece who was born during her time away at Ithaca and thus has no difficulty in acknowledging her womanhood.
In turn, Carlotta too finds her surroundings unrecognizable. The streets of her once poor, Black, working-class neighbourhood have transformed into a place where “linen-white mothers shoved strollers over the concrete, and Black women pushed yet more white children in other strollers,” which leads her to wonder: “Dag, what happened, did they cancel black chillun round here?”. The rest of the city is transformed, too: Times Square has been cleared of its “adult booth-stores and nasty theatres” in favour of a chaotic assemblage of skyscrapers and giant, flashy screens, and familiar mom-and-pop businesses have been replaced by upscale cupcake-only shops, ginormous supermarket chains “loved by liberal do-gooders with deep pockets,” and ridiculously expensive shoe stores that boast minimalistic décor and names like Amanda. In thus juxtaposing the family’s reception of Carlotta’s transition with such overwhelming changes as the gentrification that breaks down communities, the hyperconsumerism that forces people to lead lives they cannot afford, and the commodity fetishism that makes many treat their cars with more care than they have for other human beings, Hannaham cleverly pushes us to consider which of these is truly absurd and worthy of our horror.
As Carlotta goes about her first day as a free woman – hobbling about the city on the mismatched shoes she sneaks off of Amanda, wondering “if there were more stars in the sky than black gum spots on the pavements of Greater New York,” trying her best to avoid the boozy corridors of her own house so as not to violate the conditions of her release or fall out of favour with the parole officer, and navigating her employment options as an ex-convict – we are dipped into the stream of her ever-so-sassy consciousness and immersed in her eagerness to gulp down every drop of life. The text switches skillfully between her distinctive, charming voice and the standard English diction of its third-person narrator, often foregoing punctuation so as to engage the reader closely with Carlotta’s vertiginous experiences from both within and without, fleshing her out as an unforgettable character who is impossible not to laugh with and root for.
The above also means that we as readers come to feel for her deeply: while she is confident, outspoken, and funny, Carlotta is also scarred by her years in Ithaca, which “did not have a separate facility for people like her – hell, they had no vocabulary for people like her” and either put her in prolonged periods of solitary confinement ‘for her own protection’ or left her vulnerable to physical and sexual assault from inmates and guards (“There wasn’t never no guards to guard the guards”). Even when free from its conditions, she is still haunted and weighed down by her dark memories from the prison, unable to let down the defences that helped her survive it. Thus, though her narrative is full of zest, we sometimes catch her in waves of post-traumatic stress, perceiving dangers where there aren’t many and cautiously suppressing her surges of animal fear and the memories of abuse that “hollowed her out.” All that makes Carlotta paranoid is also what makes her so funny – indeed, her sense of humour is her manner of processing this trauma and escaping it: “The only way I know how to handle shit is to make a joke an keep movin on.” And move on she does: instead of allowing the reader to gloss over her suffering or pigeonhole her as a helpless victim, her comic manner lends a certain weight to the ideas she considers with seriousness, revealing the manner in which racial, sexual, and class-based prejudices operate and the thin line that keeps us from experiencing the terror these put her through.
As insurmountable as it seems, this line between freedom and control is really very thin, and Hannaham demonstrates this in the book with remarkable subtlety. While Carlotta’s harrowing experience of incarceration sheds light on the brutality of the criminal justice system, the story also makes use of her first brush with 21st century technology as a launchpad to examining its perilous implications for our ideas of freedom. One of the first things Carlotta takes pleasure in after getting out is the fact she is no longer being watched: “Nobody had her in their sights. No white guy’s eye, robot or human, eavesdropped on her.” Having been under constant surveillance for over two decades, she is horrified when she sees hordes of people walking down 42nd street with their faces glued to their screens and notices the pervasiveness of GPS systems, knowing what they could be used for. Later, joking with her childhood friend about the squalid conditions of correctional facilities – “Chile, they ain’t correcting no kinda nothing in no upstate prisons, but they sure know how to incorrect a motherfucker” – she notes the inhumane psychological torture meted to convicts, comparing it with ‘research’ that tortures animals in the name of science in order to “use that shit in the next war against people of color.”
Thus, while it may on the face of it appear to be concerned with the fate of a single character, Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta is a prismatic novel that works to reveal the systemic prejudices that colour all of society without resorting to didacticism, and whilst retaining so much heart. It is a story like none other, while also functioning as the author’s fantastic tribute to James Joyce’s Ulysses: Hannaham’s Carlotta breaks open the belly of Brooklyn with the same fervour and ferocity as Joyce’s Dublin, and in similarly making us privy to his protagonist’s most quotidian thoughts – her joy and pain, her empathy and judgement – he calls attention to other forms of marginalisation that bubble around her and around us: that of mixed-race people, immigrants, the disabled, the poor, the elderly, and all others in-between. Against all this – all the sorrow and displacement and disenchantment and injustice – echoes the protagonist’s rallying cry of self-assertion: “I just wanna be me, I just wanna be a human fuckin person like ev’-body else, without nobody telling me not to do who I am, holding me against my will, don’t wanna be no statistic or no tragedy or no symbol of nothing going wrong in society. Cause I’m what’s right, honey, I’m what’s going right.”
Hilarious, heartbreaking, and unapologetically original, Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta is a book not to be missed, the kind of ingenious tragicomedy that fills the reader up while also injecting us with a hunger for more: more freedom, more rights, more life. Though there is much struggle to come for Carlotta when we leave her, we cannot help but hold hands with her indomitable spirit, face the music, and say yes – “I’ma say Yes honey, I do, honey I’ma say Yes motherfucker” – to whatever it is that the future holds, because, at least, it exists, and so do we.
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I highly recommend listening to this book in the audiobook format as narrated by James Hannaham and Flame Monroe.
April 4, 2023
the epitome of having to laugh or else you will cry and bitch it is so funny
September 8, 2024
Quite an experience. Wild. Hilarious. Unconventional. Saucy. The rules of writing are being absolutely obliterated in this uncategorizable crazy tale of Carlotta Mercedes née Dustin Chambers. Just flat out different in not only the way the story is revealed but the style of writing.
There are point of view changes within paragraphs, hell sometimes in the same sentence. Going from first-person to third-person with a quick turn. There are the phonetic spelling of words, which will drive language purists crazy.
“You couldn’t look at no boring-ass caterpillar and recanize the gorgeous butterfly that it done become after, right?”
If you come to this book with an open mind and can be a nonconformist for a few hours then you will get a good solid tale of a struggle to live one’s truth. And you will meet an array of odd characters as witnesses to Carlotta’s fight to be free, in every sense of the word. Not giving plot summary as the blurb encircled the book quite decisively.
I can definitely see this landing on best of year lists, just for the sheer hilarity and off the edge style of writing. This is a book not to be just read, but to be experienced. The title alone is unlike anything currently in the fiction market, it was the impetus for me to request this book. So, many thanks to Netgalley and Little Brown &Co. for an advanced DRC. Book lands everywhere on Aug. 30, 2022.
There are point of view changes within paragraphs, hell sometimes in the same sentence. Going from first-person to third-person with a quick turn. There are the phonetic spelling of words, which will drive language purists crazy.
“You couldn’t look at no boring-ass caterpillar and recanize the gorgeous butterfly that it done become after, right?”
If you come to this book with an open mind and can be a nonconformist for a few hours then you will get a good solid tale of a struggle to live one’s truth. And you will meet an array of odd characters as witnesses to Carlotta’s fight to be free, in every sense of the word. Not giving plot summary as the blurb encircled the book quite decisively.
I can definitely see this landing on best of year lists, just for the sheer hilarity and off the edge style of writing. This is a book not to be just read, but to be experienced. The title alone is unlike anything currently in the fiction market, it was the impetus for me to request this book. So, many thanks to Netgalley and Little Brown &Co. for an advanced DRC. Book lands everywhere on Aug. 30, 2022.
September 20, 2022
This was such an enjoyable novel and, stylistically at least, far removed from what I tend to go for these days. It's dense and rambling in all the best ways, the story goes quite slowly but the narration is so engaging and hip that you easily get swept away. Carlotta is a tragic figure in many ways. She's had to put up with so much. But she faces the world with such heart and abandon, most of the time. She's an inspiration in a world of ridiculous rules, institutional racism and sexism. One of the most difficult novels I've read all year but well worth the effort.
October 10, 2022
There are some great female characters (all the male characters suck) in this novel about a transwoman coming out of a male prison after more than 20 years: Carlotta (formerly Dustin), but also Doodle, grandma Frona and Lou. Luckily, there’s also a lot of humour. I did give a shit about Carlotta, but the language (black urban English?) became annoying to me halfway through. Also the switch between first person and third person narration didn’t always feel natural or logical.
Thank you Europa Editions and Netgalley UK for the ARC.
Thank you Europa Editions and Netgalley UK for the ARC.
August 13, 2024
Świetne tłumaczenie, ale ten kto dał NICKY Minaj w przypisach DIDNT DO THEIR HOMOWORK
September 16, 2022
Hannaham won the 2016 Pen Faulkner for Delicious Foods, a novel that showcased his skill at whipsawing readers between hilarity and heartbreak while dramatizing the perils of living in a racist society. Now he keeps us on that same knife edge as he immerses us in the life of a Black trans woman released after 20+ years in prison. Carlotta is a joy to spend time with, despite some questionable decision-making on her part, and her voice is a beautiful accomplishment. I highly recommend the audiobook, read by Hannaham and Flame Monroe.
March 30, 2024
dobrze spędzony czas. styl opowieści zapada mi w pamięć. carlotta zasługuje na 5 gwiazdek, to przewybitna postać, sama historia… trochę utyka, dałabym jej może 3 gwiazdki. język jest bardzo charakterystyczny, mocno osadzony, momentami aż zbyt karykaturalny? może to po prostu kwestia bycia spoza targetu, w końcu jestem białą cis osobą z europy, ale momentami czułam się jak w „american fiction”. definitywnie nie miałam w dupie tego, co stało się z carlottą, bardzo jej kibicowałam w stawianiu pierwszych kroków na wolności:)
July 22, 2022
This was a bit of a disappointment. It's definitely a "the real story is the streets we walked along the way" type book, and I get the feeling it's just a little TOO rooted in Brooklyn - there's only so many random street names and shops I can read before glazing over, however heavy-handed the point of gentrification and stagnation of prison time needs to be. It's also very literary, with Carlotta's thoughts interjecting sentences randomly and with no punctuation, and the narrative switching endlessly from third to first person. I will say as the book went on the way the person changes were used was very well done and I like that it had a purpose, but I still found it very difficult.
Carlotta is a fantastic character, and I kind of wish we'd had more time to get to know her. The book used repetition a lot, in flashbacks to events as well as repetition of certain "frames" ie walking the streets of Brooklyn, or moving throughout the family brownstone. It's all very well planned but honestly just a tad too blunt for my liking - the explicit, endless repetition ends up leaving little room for nuance or for the reader to focus on their own interpretations of everything that the book could hold. It's also very focussed on the writing - plot is secondary at best - which makes the way the book ends slightly jarring as it is quickly wrapped up without the potential insight or literary flourishes that fill the rest of the book.
Overall I think it's easy to say this is objectively good and has some important things to say, but I don't think it's enjoyable, and I don't think it's really worth reading as entertainment - much as I love Carlotta and her sense of humour. It's a thinker, but too heavy-handed and focussed on guiding your thoughts to allow you to really think about it. It will probably do well among specific New York literary types and maybe some awards but I can't say I'd especially recommend it.
Carlotta is a fantastic character, and I kind of wish we'd had more time to get to know her. The book used repetition a lot, in flashbacks to events as well as repetition of certain "frames" ie walking the streets of Brooklyn, or moving throughout the family brownstone. It's all very well planned but honestly just a tad too blunt for my liking - the explicit, endless repetition ends up leaving little room for nuance or for the reader to focus on their own interpretations of everything that the book could hold. It's also very focussed on the writing - plot is secondary at best - which makes the way the book ends slightly jarring as it is quickly wrapped up without the potential insight or literary flourishes that fill the rest of the book.
Overall I think it's easy to say this is objectively good and has some important things to say, but I don't think it's enjoyable, and I don't think it's really worth reading as entertainment - much as I love Carlotta and her sense of humour. It's a thinker, but too heavy-handed and focussed on guiding your thoughts to allow you to really think about it. It will probably do well among specific New York literary types and maybe some awards but I can't say I'd especially recommend it.
June 3, 2023
This is a tricky one to rate. Carlotta as a character? 5 stars. I just loved her. But the story itself? Idk, 3 stars? I think I can be talked up on it. This was definitely a case of loving the main character but not necessarily loving the story. I think a lot of my issue is that the chapters were long, so if I had to pause in the middle of a chapter and then couldn't pick it up for a day or two, then I was thrown off. That being said, I did this book on audio, and I feel like that’s the best way to do this book! Carlotta’s personality really shines this way.
April 7, 2023
Carlotta is a fantastic character and parts of the novel really sing. Overall it lacked flow and teeth (especially for a sature).
July 5, 2022
Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta is James Hannaham’s story of transitions: of gender, of incarceration, and into a new world.
Carlotta was in the wrong place at the wrong time when she was arrested and convicted of a crime she didn’t commit. At the opening of this story, we find Carlotta leaving prison after 22 years, a changed person from when she entered: most clearly because she has left her gender assigned at birth to be the woman she always was. But life outside of Prison is no easy feat as she tries to find a home free of alcohol, to land a job despite her conviction, and to rekindle friendships and family connections with people who don’t know who she is or has become.
Hannaham takes his readers into the mind of Carlotta so that you can feel the pain, stress, and frustration she feels trying to fit into a world that has done nothing but beat her down. Hannaham’s writing is powerful, and he makes Carlotta such a unique character with a special voice, though the novel can tend towards the too-easy and unbelievable at times, likely because Hannaham, himself, is not trans. With superb writing and a truly magical narrator, Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta is a must read book for anyone who cares about queer lives, prisons, and those at the bottom of society’s hierarchies.
Carlotta was in the wrong place at the wrong time when she was arrested and convicted of a crime she didn’t commit. At the opening of this story, we find Carlotta leaving prison after 22 years, a changed person from when she entered: most clearly because she has left her gender assigned at birth to be the woman she always was. But life outside of Prison is no easy feat as she tries to find a home free of alcohol, to land a job despite her conviction, and to rekindle friendships and family connections with people who don’t know who she is or has become.
Hannaham takes his readers into the mind of Carlotta so that you can feel the pain, stress, and frustration she feels trying to fit into a world that has done nothing but beat her down. Hannaham’s writing is powerful, and he makes Carlotta such a unique character with a special voice, though the novel can tend towards the too-easy and unbelievable at times, likely because Hannaham, himself, is not trans. With superb writing and a truly magical narrator, Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta is a must read book for anyone who cares about queer lives, prisons, and those at the bottom of society’s hierarchies.
September 25, 2022
A bold statement when it's only the end of September, but I think this will be my top read of 2022. I thought this was an incredible novel: Carlotta's story had me totally engaged, her voice was pitch perfect and this novel was flawless. I found this impossible to put down and highly recommend it. All of the stars!
Thank you Netgalley and Europa Editions for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.
Thank you Netgalley and Europa Editions for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.
December 23, 2022
Woosah. I didnt anticipate that the title would be indicative of the writing style but in hindsight it was. I chose this book for my homegirl book club to dive into experiences of Black trans women but the combination of the train of thought, colloquial writing that felt mostly contrived, and the sheer amount of violence made this super tough to get through. I know the irony is that many Black trans women do experience unrepentant amounts of violence and this book is mostly a mirror about how fucked up society is but the author seemed like an outsider who attempting to mimic working class Black folks whom they had no relationship to. Im glad I read this, it did provide from framing for our Black cis women group chat to reflect on our relationship to transphobia, I just wish the author wrote in a way that felt less performative and described the multiple violences Carlotta experienced in a way that felt less like trauma porn.
August 31, 2022
Made it to page 75. His writing style is all over the place. I couldn't enjoy the story. I really didn't give a sh!t what happened to Carlotta.
May 5, 2023
FIVE STARS FOR CARLOTTA MERCEDES.
Carlotta is the strongest and funniest person I’ve never met. One of my favorite reads of the year, I wish I could give it six stars.
Carlotta is the strongest and funniest person I’ve never met. One of my favorite reads of the year, I wish I could give it six stars.
March 27, 2023
I was totally in AWE of the level of sophisticated writing in this novel. Hannahan's main character and narrator speaks in a language somewhat removed from what I am used to hearing, nevertheless I enjoyed every minute of this funny and engaging novel. At first I thought it was going to be a light hearted laugh out loud storyline and it was in some parts, and then I realised I was actually being exposed to a very sophisticated piece of literature, with some very confronting and often sad realities of the life of someone incarcerated for more than twenty years, and the harsh realities of life on the outside afterwards. It really made me think about the cycle of life and what can happen when a lack of education points you in the wrong direction early on in your life. Looking forward to more Hannahan.
December 23, 2022
Overall solid read, interesting personal account type story with a good pace. At time it relied too heavily on narration when there could've been a better retelling using the actual story. This narration in the second third was a bit tedious - I wish there was more actual action like the first part but there was a solid ending to make up for it.
April 19, 2024
"It's really just laziness, ain't it, like the less rights you think a motherfucker got, the less you think you gotta recanize that that person be a real person with a brain an feelings an children an parents, an that they lives and they struggles be real an not just some mumbo jumbo crapped out a bird's ass on your windshield. The less you think you gotta care about another person, the less you *do* care."
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I expected this book to be excellent, and it was something even greater. Carlotta Mercedes had so much capacity for joy and a wonder for this "new" world that was infectious. I loved the constant shift from third to first person- a narration of Carlotta's actions/circumstance and an immediate switch to her inner dialogue.
She was so funny and so aware of her why. Her bravery to share her story of abuse to Doodle and her awareness during the disclosure of how alien the world she was describing is was devastating. I was so sad for her at towards the end, because of how the system was just designed for her to fail and not remotely to support her reentry. But I loved that we were able to reconnect with her at the end and see that her hope for herself is still there.
Hannaham pulled no punches in his commentary on gentrification, the prison system, transphobia, racism, and the loneliness of the modern age. There were moments when Carlotta's soliloquies felt like Hannaham philosophizing, but I actually enjoyed it.
I loved how immersive this book was- the dialect especially. And mostly, I loved Carlotta's resilience in a world that had transformed, and her determination to believe in better things.
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I expected this book to be excellent, and it was something even greater. Carlotta Mercedes had so much capacity for joy and a wonder for this "new" world that was infectious. I loved the constant shift from third to first person- a narration of Carlotta's actions/circumstance and an immediate switch to her inner dialogue.
She was so funny and so aware of her why. Her bravery to share her story of abuse to Doodle and her awareness during the disclosure of how alien the world she was describing is was devastating. I was so sad for her at towards the end, because of how the system was just designed for her to fail and not remotely to support her reentry. But I loved that we were able to reconnect with her at the end and see that her hope for herself is still there.
Hannaham pulled no punches in his commentary on gentrification, the prison system, transphobia, racism, and the loneliness of the modern age. There were moments when Carlotta's soliloquies felt like Hannaham philosophizing, but I actually enjoyed it.
I loved how immersive this book was- the dialect especially. And mostly, I loved Carlotta's resilience in a world that had transformed, and her determination to believe in better things.
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