About
James Hannaham's
God Says No.
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To buy
God Says No,
click here.
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To read a profile of James in the Village Voice, please click here.
To listen to an interview with James on Studio 360, go here (scroll down).
For Bookslut's interview with James, please click here.
Papercuts, the lit blog of the New York Times, interview with James is here.
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The Book.
Gary Gray marries his first girlfriend, a fellow student from Central Florida Christian College who loves Disney World as much as he does. They are nineteen, God-fearing, and eager to start a family, but a week before their wedding Gary goes into a rest-stop bathroom and lets something happen. God Says No is his testimony − the story of a young black Christian struggling with desire and belief, with his love for his wife and his appetite for other men, told in a singular, emotional voice. Driven by desperation and religious visions, the path that Gary Gray takes − from revival meetings to out life in Atlanta to a pray-away-the-gay ministry in Memphis, Tennessee − gives a riveting picture of how a life like his can be lived, and how it can't.
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Praise.
"God Says No is a masterful piece of writing and a powerful human portrait, but for the present moment it is most important for shedding light on an issue that is at the center of much of our political conflict. Gary is a crossroads figure who we can all identify with in some way—gay and evangelical, a black man from the deep south with a Samoan wife who loves Disney World and flirts with cosmopolitanism. He is an everyman, and, through it all, universally human."
—Imani Perry, The Defenders Online
"...beautifully written and convincing portrayal of one man's fight with his faith and his sexual feelings"
—TimeOut New York
"Hannaham shifts the trajectory in an unpredictable story that zigzags from the Atlanta avant-garde theater scene to a religious reparative therapy program called Resurrection Ministries, where men like Gary struggle to purge their sinful desires."
—Salon.com
No doesn't make easy jokes about evangelicalism or body image or sexual politics—Gray's relationship with God becomes complicated as he evolves, but it never goes away. Instead, it charges headlong into those issues and, with Hannaham's compassionate voice guiding the way, finds room to accept everyone."
—Paul Constant, The Stranger
"The novel works both as a wicked satire of conservative Christianity and as a sensitive portrait of a struggling Christian. Hannaham's contemporary South is a complicated place, where lust makes people strange, and love comes in more varieties than man-woman couplings. Through Gray's example, Hannaham shows how God might say "no" to Christians' rejection of homosexuality. The novel's so good, though, that God might just say "yes" to it."
—Walter Biggins, Jackson Mississippi Free Press
It is the impressive discipline of first-time novelist James Hannaham's flat prose—which displays an almost anti-writerly lack of ornament, devoid of extensive contemplation – that allows such a thorough inhabitation of his character.
—Austin Chronicle
"Gary Gray is a wholly American character unlike many we meet in literary fiction, written in a clear, contemporary style that has a good chuckle at our taboos. God Says No takes our cultural anxiety about homosexuality and spins it into prose that breathes, capturing a human moment with all the sadness and humor that it deserves."
—Popdamage Magazine
"... if you truly wonder what it's like to walk in someone else's shoes or see someone walk your walk, particularly a gay man who struggles mightily with his religion, his sexuality and his identity, this book is an illuminating force."
—Karen Thomas, Dallas Morning News
"All the while, the narrative is delivered with such lightness and wonderment that everything appears in the caricature form of the American dream. God Says No is about this innocence in enlightenment, proving that there really is something brave about every part of the journey. It takes courage to worship, to lose faith, to become yourself—or to write sincerely about any of it."
—Rachel Katz, Boston Weekly Dig
"In a fantastic first novel, God Says No explores the tumult of inner conflict, Fundamentalist Christianity versus nature, the desire to make loved ones happy, the quest for "goodness," and a near-universal urge to fit in. James Hannaham will be an exciting author to follow. Anyone interested in the seemingly increasingly escalating clash of the progressive gay rights movement and those who seek to squash it under a misunderstanding boot will find the book deeply interesting."
—Hipster Book Club
"If you haven't checked it out yet (you should), it's a funny and moving tale of boy-meets-boy, boy-meets-Jesus, Jesus-doesn't-approve-of-boy, boy-chases-Jesus-while-also-chasing-boys. As you can guess, things get complicated."
—Austinist
"A tender, funny tour of a mind struggling to do the right thing. A revelatory and sympathetic guide to a misunderstood world."
—Steve Martin, author of Shopgirl and Born Standing Up
"James Hannaham's God Says No introduces a groundbreaking new American voice: a writer of spectacular sentences who has trained his sights on a world that has hardly been touched by literary fiction. Topical and ambitious, disturbing and hilarious, God Says No is everything a person could ask of a first novel − and twice that much."
− Jennifer Egan, author of Look at Me and The Keep
"This novel is an absolute original. Gary Gray's search for wholeness and acceptance is a heartfelt (and often very funny) plea for all men (and women) to be embraced just as they are. A wonderful debut."
− Martha Southgate, author of Third Girl From The Left
"God Says No is a book that was desperate to be written but well out of reach. And then James Hannaham came along and wrote it, with the kind of care, wit, sympathy and fury that the book deserved. Imagine Candide ... − okay, imagine Candide as a black man, a southerner, a Christian fundamentalist, middle-class, obese, married, a father, and utterly, even profoundly gay. If a comedy, in the classical sense, is a story then ends in a marriage, and a tragedy is a story that ends with a death, then what do you call a book that ends with a split and a resurrection? A truly daring first novel, and something to read."
− Jim Lewis, author of Why the Tree Loves the Ax
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