Novel Reflects Life
As a researcher for the SHAWN project, I am aware that our participants have faced a variety of struggles in the criminal-legal system. As a result, many women face intense trauma, issues with reunification, and a variety of hurdles. One of the questions that has arisen while I’ve listened to transcripts and interviewed women is, “How do people rejoin society after being in prison? Especially after a long period of incarceration?”
This question is addressed in James Hannaham’s novel, “Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta.” In this book, Carlotta Mercedes, an Afro-Latina Trans Woman, is released from prison after serving over 21 years. Throughout the book, the reader follows Carlotta as she navigates her new life of freedom in her hometown of New York City.
In the very first seconds after her release from prison, Carlotta faces a new world that is hard to navigate. She is stunned by new-age mobile phones. Things that used to be second nature to her are now extremely complicated. For example, when she tries to get on the subway, she is confused that there is no place to buy tokens. Unbeknownst to her, she now needs a metro card. Without this information, it takes her a long time just to get a card to take the subway home.
The internet and technology are not the only aspects of the world that have changed for her. While walking to her childhood home, she notices that her neighborhood is not what it used to be. Instead of finding friendly faces, she encounters unwelcoming White people who, “look at her as if she doesn’t belong.” This reflects the vast amount of gentrification that happened in Brooklyn while she was away.
Even more destabilizing for Carlotta is her experience arriving back to her childhood home. When she gets there, she finds there is a party at her house, but the party isn’t for her, it’s for her niece. The only acknowledgment of her arrival home is a small paper banner that includes her dead name. When she is finally acknowledged by family members, their reactions to her are filled with vitriol or apathy, instead of love and support. The social assistance and care that she expected to encounter when she came back home, did not exist.
The worn-down seats and dust on the subway car were the only familiar things she found on her first day back after over two decades in prison. For Carlotta, this train, this time capsule, served as a comfort when everything else in her world had morphed and changed without her.
When women come home from prison, programs that help them rejoin society are needed. In Carlotta’s case, these services were either non-existent or minimal at best, even though she was on parole. As a result, Carlotta was forced to manage her PTSD alone, while navigating the requirements of community supervision and dealing with overwhelming culture shock. Taken together, these factors made “re-joining society” very complicated.
