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.
