James Hannaham Libros

After more than twenty years in prison, a trans woman on parole spends a whirlwind Fourth of July weekend in Brooklyn, trying to reconcile with the son she left behind and reunite with a family reluctant to accept her true identity. Carlotta Mercedes has faced misunderstanding her entire life. Initially caught in a robbery gone wrong, she was known by her birth name in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, before gentrification changed the landscape. During her incarceration, she embraced her identity as Carlotta, but prison authorities rejected this, keeping her in an all-male cell block and subjecting her to abuse and solitary confinement. After five attempts, she finally gains conditional freedom and a bus ticket back to a transformed New York City, where she must navigate her past and present. Can she reconnect with her son and family while adhering to stringent parole conditions and staying out of jail? With the same vibrant energy found in Delicious Foods, this novel takes listeners through Brooklyn's streets during a dynamic holiday weekend. It offers an entertaining narrative and a memorable cast of characters while prompting reflection on the injustices of a prison system that continues to punish individuals even after their release.

A moving story of freedom, perseverance, and survival.

Exploring the complexities of morality and the human experience, this narrative offers a heartfelt and humorous glimpse into a character's internal battle to make ethical choices. Through a blend of wit and vulnerability, the story delves into the challenges of navigating life's dilemmas, highlighting the universal struggle to balance personal desires with a sense of responsibility. The journey promises to resonate with readers, inviting them to reflect on their own choices and the intricacies of doing what is right.

"From visual artist and award-winning writer of Delicious Foods, a book of prose and images that uses the poetry of Fernando Pessoa and the history of air disasters to investigate con men, identity politics, failures of leadership, the privilege of ineptitude, the slave trade, and the nature of consciousness. Early in 2017, on a plane trip from Cape Verde to Lisbon, James Hannaham started reading Pessoa & Co., Richard Zenith's English translation of Fernando Pessoa's selected works. It was two months since the presidential election; like many people, ideas about unfitness for service and failures of leadership were very much on his mind. Imagine his consternation upon opening the Pessoa anthology to discover that the first line in the first poem, The Keeper of Sheep is: "I've never kept sheep/But it's as if I did." The Portuguese, Hannaham had been musing, were also responsible for jump-starting colonialism and the global slave trade, which gradually became racialized based on false beliefs about people of African descent. Pessoa published only one book in Portuguese in his lifetime, Mensagem, which consisted of unselfconscious paeans to European explorers. Hannaham felt compelled to respond to Pessoa's work in some way: to undo it in certain respects, and to rescue from it what still felt relevant. Once in Lisbon, he began a quasi-daily practice of reading a poem from Zenith's anthology, meditating on a response, and writing a piece in whatever mode seemed to click, regardless of form or genre. This book is the result of that practice"-- Provided by publisher