James HannahamRecensioni

A challenging, irreverent book. It switches tense in a way that was a little challenging in the audio format, but I got the rhythm of it. Might make a better read than a listen. The central "why'd you go to prison" mystery that is stretched over the narrative was less interesting to me than the "what happened there" which is also spread out but ultimately less explored.

Blatantly lifting this review from a comment I wrote to a Goodreads friend who asked how I was enjoying it. :P Somewhat absurd in its plotting, very stream of consciousness, but with real heart underneath and the MC's voice is extremely well-developed and believable. Funny, too!

The novel is told by a religious, overweight African American young man, dealing with his homosexuality. His journey takes us through his teenage marriage, parenting, and how he leads a double life to control his gayness, including a form of gay conversion therapy. Well written although the characters and story feel superficial.

Another book with a great hook-Right off the bat we meet Eddie, a young African American who has been terribly injured resulting in the loss of both his hands. The novel backtracks as to how this happened along with a first person narrative of an invisible drug dealer that ruins the life of Eddie's mother Darlene. The resolution is beautifully developed but the journey getting there is way too long. An editor should have had the author trim a good junk of the book.

still one of my favs

This book is a tough one to review in an impartial fair way, so I'm going to just put my biases right out there, and people can criticize me about them.

The story opens with a bang. A man, Eddie, is driving a stolen Suburu north, and he has no hands - - just bloody stumps. It's a great opening. Who couldn't wonder about this man and what happened to him?

Eddie turns out to be the son of a woman, Darlene. Darlene unfortunately is a prostitute and crack cocaine user who gets picked up and ferreted away to farm in Louisiana. This farm is under the auspices of Delicious Foods, and essentially treats its workers like indentured servants . . .one step above slaves . . .a very small step.

The story revolves around Eddie and Darlene primarily and is narrated from their points of view, but there is another narrator, Scotty. Scotty is in fact crack cocaine. Yes, crack cocaine is character. This actually works out a little better than it sounds like it would. I will give the author a nod and say it was fresh. The whole plot line is very original so kudos to him on that.

Here's what really bothered me. The author is African American. And I think he was, in part, trying to show the damage from slavery in a modern day setting. Or trying to skewer the whole migrant worker situation. Or attempting to show why people are incapable of extricating themselves from difficult situations.

But frankly, I just felt he portrayed black people in a terrible light. They were weak, easily manipulated, derailed by the least little challenge, addicted to drugs. They are being held as prisoners, and when someone escapes, he doesn't call the police. In fact over and over again, no one contacts the police. I understand that there is a lot of suspicion of the police in the black community, and that was portrayed in the book, but there were heinous crimes going on.

So then, I think to myself, well white people write about other white people and portray them in terrible ways. Why can't an African American author do the same? But I do think if a white author wrote this exact same book, people would say it was racist. When Scotty talks it's in some kind of urban dialect. The whole thing just really turned me off. None of the characters was especially admirable except Darlene's husband (who is a minor player in this whole drama). Darlene gave a bad name to all women, and yet somehow, I think the author felt like he had justified her behaviors. I just couldn't see it. I didn't find her to be sympathetic.

The story itself had some extremely dramatic moments, but it also had a lot of chapters that felt like filler. When Scotty narrated, I just felt very detached from the story. I admired how the author articulated what a drug might say if a drug was a person, but all in all, that didn't really propel the story forward.

So while critics may love this one, I just couldn't. It just showed the worst side of humanity with little to redeem it.

Lost interest in reading this book because the main character is a prisoner; the language is too much black slang, I guess the way (certain) prisoners talk; because I couldn’t figure out the plot.

2022. Carlotta Mercedes did more than 20 years in Ithaca on some bullshit robbery she didn’t even have anything to do with. In men’s prison, months in solitary, getting raped by guards. Then she gets out on parole for a couple days, during which most of the action takes place. A wonderful meditation on what freedom feels like. Carlotta is a three dimensional character with trauma, anger, humor and joy. In short a person, a human being, a black trans woman. It shouldn’t seem so remarkable, but in fiction at least, it is rare, if not impossible to find.

Less of a book than a piece of and about conceptual art, but it still manages to confirm Hannaham's status as one of my two or three favorite living authors.

One of my favorite books of the last several years. Not coincidentally, the funniest book I've read since Delicious Foods.

In retrospect, the structure is brilliant, letting what was the ostensible Sword of Damocles fall, only to have Carlotta come out the other side far happier. But the fact that that is never telegraphed, and what feels like one sort of (horror) story then turns into a completely different, much more powerful and empowered one, inspires awe in me. I am both glad I'm alive to read James Hannaham's books, and jealous that his mind works in such a smart way.

In this literary work of urban fiction, Carlotta Mercedes, a convict who changed her gender presentation while serving a 22-year prison sentence, earns parole and returns to her family in Brooklyn. Her darkly comic adventures involve an expensive shoe, a driving lesson, and a fateful “partywake” for a dead man she never knew. More importantly, the narrative highlights the barriers that make it difficult for parolees to reenter society, including rigid rules and a lack of legitimate employment opportunities. Carlotta’s issues are compounded by her PTSD and her son’s refusal to accept her female identity.

Author James Hannaham’s technique of switching diction (from a neutral, omniscient narrator to Carlotta’s own street-and-prison slang) in
mid-sentence is effective but requires careful reading. Still, this is a rewarding work for readers who are willing to stick with it.

I received an advance copy of this book. Thank you

I really enjoyed this book and came to really, really care about Carlotta. James Hannaham's style of writing really captures Carlotta, and there wasn't a page, where I couldn't picture Carlotta and her situation down to her mismatched shoes.
Carlotta, was at the wrong place and got caught up in a robbery gone bad. She's sent away to a prison in Ithaca for 22 years. She entered as a he, and left as a she, realizing this was who she was all along. 5 times she goes before the parole board, before finally, almost at the end of her sentence she's released. A lot has happened in 22 years, which leaves her vulnerable. She longs to see her son, whom she's written to weekly, she longs to go home and connect with all those she's left behind, she longs to finally get some nice-looking outfits, find a job and start life again. What she comes home to is very, very different. Everything has changed, people all stare into their phones, her neighborhood has become gentrified, her mother has dementia and just sits, her home is party central, her son never received her letters and isn't ok with his dad being a woman. Her home situation breaks every condition of her parole. Yet despite all of this, she still has a lot of hope and vision about how life is finally going to be for her.
She has so much going on in her mind that her thoughts burst out in long run-on sentences. She's always thinking.
After seeing her brother, who is obese, never leaves his room, and plays video games, she says:
Maybe that's what freedom is, the freedom to waste your f*****g freedom, to not even notice you got it till you wind up behind bars getting your a** beat up and raped by a rapist who crying rape. Hell, I wonder how free anybody who out here pissing away they freedom anyhow? Gotta work ten jobs and still can't afford no rent,...your family up in ya face tryna tell you how to live your life, Be a woman! Be a man!...I'ma have to be that person myself, an I ain't ezzackly down for that, but anything aboveground beat the SHU" (solitary confinement)
Carlotta doesn't give up. This isn't really an upbeat book, but it is because of Carlotta's spirit.

SEASON THREE OF THE ABC SERIES AMERICAN CRIME PREMIERED ON MARCH 12. THIS SEASON SHINES A SPOTLIGHT ON INDENTURED SERVITUDE, ESSENTIALLY SLAVERY, IN THE U.S. AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRY. AND THAT IS THE THEME OF THIS VERY GOOD NOVEL THAT APPEARED IN 2016. AS THE OPENING PARAGRAPH OF THE REVIEW ILLUSTRATES, AGRICULTURAL SLAVERY DOES EXIST IN THE U.S. TODAY.

Delicious Foods

By James Hannaham

Every once in a while when sitting down to dinner, perhaps you wonder idly where your veggies and fruits come from, maybe even who grows and picks them for you. Even under the best of circumstances picking and packing crops is hard work. But who would believe slave laborers pick and pack our food? Overworked, underpaid, yes, but not virtual slaves, right?

Yet, while not the norm, slave labor does exist in the USA. Don’t believe it? Google Jewel Goodman, Tampa Bay Times, and read about near slavery of the type James Hannaham uses as a focal point of his powerful and fast-paced novel of people in desperate poverty and in the throes of crack cocaine addiction. As the story reports, “Goodman is one of more than 1,000 slaves who have gained freedom in Florida since 1997.” The thrust being: Delicious Foods is less the product of wild imagination than even wilder and sadder reality for too many.

We meet Eddie in flight, on his way to Minnesota, driving a car, steering with his forehead and arms, as where once he had hands, now are phantoms and bloody stumps. We see how he overcomes and establishes himself as the “Handyman Without Hands,” and then how his predicament came about.

Scotty tells the bulk of the sorry. He, or it, turns out to be quite a novel narrative device, for readers will be hard pressed to think of a novel narrated by crack cocaine. It’s through his smokey, quelling, and even at times humorous vernacular that readers learn about Darlene, Eddie’s mother.

Darlene, once a happy college girl, wife of a college basketball star and later civil rights activist, has been reduced, through guilt and hopeless, to a street hooker, answering to the siren call of escapism preached by Scotty. Fleeing her past, enraptured by her addiction, she falls prey to the promises of a better life offered by representatives of Delicious Foods. Once in their grasp, they encumber and shackle her, from the very first moments, in financial servitude.

For the majority of time, the novel centers on Darlene’s years at Delicious Foods. She lives in deplorably filthy conditions, subsists on what most would regard as not even good enough to be garbage, works long, hard hours under the harshest conditions and abusive supervision, torments herself over her false belief she caused the death of her husband, longs for her son Eddie, dreams of escaping, and mellows all her emotional and physical suffering into the background with the help of her companion, the always available Scotty. It’s her entire servitude to Delicious Foods that readers might think fiction but which, to some degree, is reality for many, and sets you to wondering, “How much pain is in the produce section of the supermarket?”

The story reconnects with Eddie, a young teen, when he finds his mother and ends up working years beside her on the farm. It’s only his intrepidness, combined with a handful of other determined characters, and a newsman with a nose for exposé, that springs them free of Delicious Foods’ grasp, but at the cost of Eddie’s hands and his relationship with his mother.

However, readers should not fear a grim ending, as Hannaham brings his tale to a close on a note of hope and redemption regarding Darlene and Eddie, though for some readers this may push the bounds of credulity understanding the tight clutch of Scotty.

SEASON THREE OF THE ABC SERIES AMERICAN CRIME PREMIERED ON MARCH 12. THIS SEASON SHINES A SPOTLIGHT ON INDENTURED SERVITUDE, ESSENTIALLY SLAVERY, IN THE U.S. AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRY. AND THAT IS THE THEME OF THIS VERY GOOD NOVEL THAT APPEARED IN 2016. AS THE OPENING PARAGRAPH OF THE REVIEW ILLUSTRATES, AGRICULTURAL SLAVERY DOES EXIST IN THE U.S. TODAY.

Delicious Foods

By James Hannaham

Every once in a while when sitting down to dinner, perhaps you wonder idly where your veggies and fruits come from, maybe even who grows and picks them for you. Even under the best of circumstances picking and packing crops is hard work. But who would believe slave laborers pick and pack our food? Overworked, underpaid, yes, but not virtual slaves, right?

Yet, while not the norm, slave labor does exist in the USA. Don’t believe it? Google Jewel Goodman, Tampa Bay Times, and read about near slavery of the type James Hannaham uses as a focal point of his powerful and fast-paced novel of people in desperate poverty and in the throes of crack cocaine addiction. As the story reports, “Goodman is one of more than 1,000 slaves who have gained freedom in Florida since 1997.” The thrust being: Delicious Foods is less the product of wild imagination than even wilder and sadder reality for too many.

We meet Eddie in flight, on his way to Minnesota, driving a car, steering with his forehead and arms, as where once he had hands, now are phantoms and bloody stumps. We see how he overcomes and establishes himself as the “Handyman Without Hands,” and then how his predicament came about.

Scotty tells the bulk of the sorry. He, or it, turns out to be quite a novel narrative device, for readers will be hard pressed to think of a novel narrated by crack cocaine. It’s through his smokey, quelling, and even at times humorous vernacular that readers learn about Darlene, Eddie’s mother.

Darlene, once a happy college girl, wife of a college basketball star and later civil rights activist, has been reduced, through guilt and hopeless, to a street hooker, answering to the siren call of escapism preached by Scotty. Fleeing her past, enraptured by her addiction, she falls prey to the promises of a better life offered by representatives of Delicious Foods. Once in their grasp, they encumber and shackle her, from the very first moments, in financial servitude.

For the majority of time, the novel centers on Darlene’s years at Delicious Foods. She lives in deplorably filthy conditions, subsists on what most would regard as not even good enough to be garbage, works long, hard hours under the harshest conditions and abusive supervision, torments herself over her false belief she caused the death of her husband, longs for her son Eddie, dreams of escaping, and mellows all her emotional and physical suffering into the background with the help of her companion, the always available Scotty. It’s her entire servitude to Delicious Foods that readers might think fiction but which, to some degree, is reality for many, and sets you to wondering, “How much pain is in the produce section of the supermarket?”

The story reconnects with Eddie, a young teen, when he finds his mother and ends up working years beside her on the farm. It’s only his intrepidness, combined with a handful of other determined characters, and a newsman with a nose for exposé, that springs them free of Delicious Foods’ grasp, but at the cost of Eddie’s hands and his relationship with his mother.

However, readers should not fear a grim ending, as Hannaham brings his tale to a close on a note of hope and redemption regarding Darlene and Eddie, though for some readers this may push the bounds of credulity understanding the tight clutch of Scotty.

After Eddie's father is killed, his mother sinks into depression and self-destruction. She's gone a lot, but always returns home eventually...until one day she doesn't. Talking with some locals Eddie learns she was picked up by a van known to hire addicts off the street to work as farm laborers. Although Delicious Foods seems on paper to be a legitimate company, the contract its desperate employees sign commits them to a life of virtual slavery. Determined to locate his mother regardless, Eddie hops aboard the van.

This was so unlike anything else I've read recently. It was a true page-turner — both gripping and horrifying. And it doesn't take a huge stretch of the imagination to envision shady businesses functioning similarly today, even in our own country.

Really interesting narrative structure (an understatement when crack is a narrator!) that tells the story of a family torn up by institutional racism. I was surprised by how funny this book could be, too, especially the voice of Scotty. I thought it was a bit slow in the middle -- there were a few too many similar chapters about life at Delicious in my opinion -- but overall it was an engaging, upsetting read. Recommended!

This was such an interesting book and I really enjoyed reading it. Hannaham presents the poignant story of Gary, a gay black Christian struggling with his identity. While there were a few lackluster points in the story, and a few points I wish Hannaham had spent more time on, this was a heart wrenching and hilarious novel.

This novel grabbed me by the very first sentence, and what a sentence that was....! I was hooked right away, and couldn’t wait to get back to the novel.

The subject matter may be incredibly difficult for some readers, because of their own background, upbringing, or what have you. But for some strange reason, it didn’t bother me quite so much. I’m not sure why.

I thought this novel was *brilliant*, and incredibly well written. The p.o.v. is many different characters (but not too many, thankfully), including Scotty. Now, Scotty is an asshole. But he’s very important to the plot. I’ve never met or read another character like Scotty, and I bet I never will. What a character...! Whew, Scotty is fresh lol.

The audiobook is narrated by the author, something which isn’t usually done a lot. Especially by authors with so few novels under their belts. But my Lort, Hannaham was GOOD....! His characters were all separated and different, and Scotty was a fricken laugh riot...! Wow, that Scotty....... 😂. But I digress.
Seriously, the audiobook is something wonderful. If you can get a copy from your local library, it’s well worth listening to, whether you’ve read the book before or not. VERY well done!

So please give this novel a try, you might love it as much as I do. It’s a real treat. I’m sorry I waited so long to get ahold of it, but I’m also glad of this because the Ohio library I frequent had the audiobook and I adored it.

4.5 stars, and very recommended!

Darlene was once a respectable wife and mother. Nathaniel, her husband and herself owned a grocery store and they were very involved in making black people understand their rights to vote and such. Their young son, Eddie, was a vital part of their lives.
Nathaniel loses his life in a questionable way and Darlene falls apart. She becomes involved in drug taking and has to find ways to sustain that habit. In doing so, she is lured by a group of people who promote a perfect-sounding job with great pay and a wonderful health plan and a really nice place to work.
She leaves with this group and essentially disappears, leaving 12 year old Eddie to survive on his own. So he makes it his mission to find his mother.

I found this novel so compelling, with Darlene's drug-of-choice having a say in the characterization of the story. Have not read anything quite as interesting in a long time.

The characters and voices of Delicious create one of those rare novels that tweak my view of the world, just a bit. Dark and rich like 86% chocolate; with a bitter flavor that has to be savored.

As brutal as it is beautiful! This tragicomedy takes racism, drug addiction and crumbling rural America as jumping off points for a stunning story where crack cocaine is a devilish narrator, a food company runs a modern day slavery ring, and the love between a mother and child struggles to survive it all. File along side Colson Whitehead's Underground Railroad and Paul Beatty's The Sellout, or imagine Confederacy of Dunces meets Beloved!

As brutal as it is beautiful! This tragicomedy takes racism, drug addiction and crumbling rural America as jumping off points for a stunning story where crack cocaine is a devilish narrator, a food company runs a modern day slavery ring, and the love between a mother and child struggles to survive it all. File along side Colson Whitehead's Underground Railroad and Paul Beatty's The Sellout, or imagine Confederacy of Dunces meets Beloved!

3.5 I struggled with this rating. The book takes a brutal look at the cascading events that can lead to addiction to crack cocaine and the devastating effect addiction has on children and families. The fact that modern-day slavery exists on farms (the Delicious Foods of the title) is sobering and makes you think about where your food comes from. It's a worthwhile book that led to a great book club discussion.

But I'm not a book critic. I'm just a reader who rates books according to how much I enjoyed the experience. This was a struggle for me to get through, yet I'm glad I read it. How's that for feeling conflicted? I thought the author's device of using crack cocaine, "Scotty", to narrate chapters was clever and effective.

These are all weighty important issues. This, along with a documentary I watched, The House I Live In, has led me to re-examine my opinions on poverty, addictions, and the so-called war on drugs. Any book that makes me think and change some pre-conceived ideas and prejudices gets a bump in my rating.

A very difficult book due to the dreadful savagery portrayed but very well written and almost hopeful in the end.

This novel came to my attention when it won the 2016 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

The book begins with Eddie Hardison, a 17-year-old black with no hands, driving a stolen vehicle from Louisiana to Minnesota. Only towards the end do we learn how his hands came to be amputated. The story flashes back to six years earlier where we meet Darlene, Eddie’s mother, who is a drug addict lured into working on a produce farm for a company called Delicious Foods. She and the other workers are basically slave labourers kept subdued by crack cocaine and/or alcohol. Eddie sets out to find his mother.

The novel is narrated from the points of view of Eddie and Darlene. But since Darlene is addicted to cocaine, her portions are narrated by Scotty, a personification of the drug that has control of her. His original voice explains how he came to be Darlene’s friend and why she has difficulty leaving him: “I am a badass drug with a reputation for keeping the loyalty of my friends and lovers in a very tight grip.”

The pacing of the novel is a bit of a problem. Day-to-day life at the farm is detailed. Then the ending moves very quickly when more detail would have been appropriate. Because much is left out, the reader may have difficulty accepting the ending as credible. The statement “It ain’t too often that the mother look at the child and get schooled” begins the change leading to the ending, but it is not accurate: parents constantly learn things from their children.

It is the characterization of Darlene that is noteworthy. The author succeeds in making a drug addict a sympathetic human being. There are times she is so naïve and makes such poor choices, but the reader comes to understand her motivations and the depth of her despair. The recurring image of a corpse as a piece of driftwood explains so much about her behaviour: “that piece of driftwood” becomes “that damn piece of driftwood” and then “that goddamn piece of driftwood.”

The book touches on a number of serious issues; racial injustice is certainly a focus. As an eleven-year-old, Eddie “understood for the first time that his classmates didn’t count for any more than he did. It didn’t matter if they never acknowledged the shadow of worthlessness above them, poised to crush them like Godzilla’s foot.” When a black man is killed in his store, Darlene observes, “Nobody white in the town admitted to seeing anything untoward. Nobody white would take the word of anybody black. It seemed sometimes as if an imaginary store had burned down and an imaginary black man had lost his imaginary life inside it.” Darlene blames herself for that black man’s death rather than the whites responsible for killing him because “They was just white boys doing what come natural in the place they from – down south, white boys be hunting Negroes like lions be hunting gazelles out in the goddamn Serengeti.” Certainly, Eddie’s lack of hands symbolizes the situation of the blacks who have virtually no control over their fates.

The exploitation of field workers in large-scale farming operations is also examined. Darlene and her fellow workers on the farm find themselves in the same trap of indentured servitude as blacks did under Jim Crow laws. One of the workers “often thought about the people who were going to eat the strawberries and lemons and watermelons he picked for Delicious, about what those folks would look like, how they might peel the fruit, how the fruit would taste, maybe about the fruit salad they would make, or the pie.” Darlene sometimes “took off one her gloves and put her fingers up on the sticky watermelon skins. She deliberately leaving fingerprints, hoping somebody gonna dust that damn melon for evidence and let her son know where she at. Way far away, folks from America and Canada . . .”
The book is definitely a worthwhile read despite its uneven pacing and some unrealistic events (like Eddie’s ability to fix computers though he knows nothing about them). After reading the book, the reader, like one of the characters, may “think about the people whose hands had touched those apples and that cantaloupe before I ate.”

Please check out my reader's blog (http://schatjesshelves.blogspot.ca/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski).½