Person Unlimited: An Ode to My Black Queer Body by Dean Atta
In his memoir Person Unlimited, Dean Atta traces his life through seven different lenses, exploring ideas of identity, race and queerness
Person Unlimited: An Ode to My Black Queer Body is the story of Dean Atta’s life told through seven respective lenses, such as ‘Crown’, ‘Belly’ and ‘Roots’. Atta does not attempt to trace a linear path through the narrative, instead inviting the reader to examine an intricate and deep mosaic of memories. Atta lays bare the most intimate parts of himself: his relationship to his family, his understanding of his own race, the difficulties and joys in navigating his sexuality. In doing so, Atta connects the dots between joy and grief, desire and contentment.
While it is Atta’s express intention to not cast his life as a linear passage, the connections between sections of his life can sometimes appear disjointed; straight after a long section on Atta’s shifting and developing relationship to religion throughout his childhood and adolescence, he then presents us with a descriptive passage on his grandfather’s death in Cyprus. While Atta may quickly recover his command over the narrative, we as readers are required to catch up to his pace.
Yet for its structural meandering, 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.