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Person Unlimited

An Ode to My Black Queer Body

Dean Atta author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Canongate Books

Published:4th Jul '24

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Person Unlimited cover

'Wonderfully original' Michael Rosen
'Brave and important' Salena Godden
'Dean Atta, speak your truth and say it loud' Lemn Sissay

You've fought and you've run away.

You've danced with other Black queer bodies until sunrise.
Sometimes you wanted to be caught and sometimes you wanted to be held.
With all that you've endured, you are nothing less than miraculous.

From choirboy to drag act, grandson to mentor, poet to lover, Dean Atta has played many roles in his life. In this formally inventive, candid and courageous book, he explores what he has carried in his body: wins and losses, shame and pride, pain and joy. Dean also investigates how radical self-acceptance and a willingness to abide with discomfort open up the possibility of a life lived beyond definition: a person unlimited.

Wonderfully original . . . a fascinating exploration of identity, sexuality and love -- MICHAEL ROSEN
Such a brave and important book -- SALENA GODDEN
All memoir is a witness statement. Dean Atta, speak your truth and say it loud -- LEMN SISSAY
A poet's moving personal testimony of a Black queer life well lived -- PETER TATCHELL
Healing, sensuous and compellingly insightful -- ALICE HILLER
This is a tour de force of a book. It takes guts to bear it all like this. Dean does not mince words. In parts I laughed, albeit in gallows humour, was shocked to my core, shed tears and discovered hairs in parts of my body I never knew existed. Person Unlimited is not for the fainthearted; it is brutally honest. It is a testimonial of the fine writer Dean Atta -- ERIC NGALLE CHARLES
An intricate and deep mosaic of memories . . . Atta writes movingly about his relationship to sex, and with a profound honesty on the long-lasting effects of trauma on the body, not shying away from the ways it has rendered him rageful and irrational, even when the recipient of stable and secure love. Person Unlimited is a book striving not for popularity or praise, but instead for connection and honesty * * The Skinny * *
Praise for Dean Atta: He follows no trend; he seeks no favours . . . Beyond black, beyond white, beyond straight, beyond gay, so I say -- BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH
Dean Atta is man on a mission -- TOM ROBINSON * * BBC 6 Music * *
The Gil Scott Heron of his generation -- CHARLIE DARK

ISBN: 9781838855659

Dimensions: 220mm x 141mm x 30mm

Weight: 380g

272 pages

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