DIDN'T NOBODY GIVE A SHIT WHAT HAPPENED TO CARLOTTA

A trans woman returns home after spending half her life in a men’s prison. She has a lot to say.

The title character of Hannaham’s superb third novel is a Black Colombian woman who’s just been paroled after spending nearly 22 years in prison. She was an accomplice in her cousin’s robbery of a Brooklyn liquor store that led to a shopkeeper’s murder; she transitioned during her incarceration, leading to routine abuses by inmates and correctional officers, including serial rape in solitary confinement. Upon her release, though, her demeanor is undefeated and stubbornly irrepressible: Hannaham often starts paragraphs with omniscient third-person descriptions followed by abrupt, unpunctuated interruptions by Carlotta. (“Carlotta turned on her heel and rushed back to the subway Yo this shit’s too much a too much!”) It’s an effective rhetorical technique, showing her urge to take control of the narrative while counteracting the kinds of “official” narratives that get the story wrong about women like her. It also simply makes Carlotta’s story engrossing reading. Carlotta’s travels through Fort Greene, Brooklyn, during the day or so the novel tracks are only moderately eventful—finding her parole officer, applying for a job, visiting family, attempting to drive a car, attending a wake—but all of it is enlivened with her commentary. Much of her sass is a survival instinct—eventually we learn just how traumatized she is, and she’s enduring what proves to be a difficult reentry into society. In parts the book reads like a time-travel story, as Carlotta observes changes in technology, manners, and her old stomping grounds. And in its day-in-the-life framing, hyperlocality, and rhetorical invention, it’s also an homage to Ulysses, whose ending is flagrantly echoed here. 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.