Available as Hardback
An intimate meditation on bodies, age and self-acceptance, from the author of The Black Flamingo
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.
“Such a brave and important book”
Salena Godden
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“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
Dean Atta
Dean Atta is an award-winning author and performance poet. He won the 2012 London Poetry Award and was named as one of the most influential LGBT people by the Independent on Sunday Pink List. He has written two YA novel-in-verses which includes The Black Flamingo which was a top-selling debut of 2020, and was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, CILIP Carnegie Medal, the Jhalak Prize and the YA Book Prize. The Black Flamingo was also awarded the prestigious Stonewall Book Award and the Carnegie Shadowers’ Choice Award 2020. Person Unlimited is his non-fiction debut.
@DeanAtta