James Hannaham enters the classroom every day, sits, and removes his hat. The hat sometimes differs, but the routine never changes. He looks around the room, meeting the eyes of the students surrounding him before smiling and cracking a joke. Writing students, clutching their drafts like babies, visibly loosen up and smile easily, wondering, is this the calm before the storm?
Hannaham is a creative writing professor at Eugene Lang College and Pratt Institute in New York City, but that is not his limit; he claims to be a sort of renaissance man on his website, labeling himself as an “author, or writer, or something like that… perhaps novelist, but also journalist, teacher and occasional performer.”
Someone with so many interests may come off as intimidating, but, attending a class with Hannaham, one realizes just how down to earth and human he actually is. He may tell the story of his tattoo – the children in school morphed his last name into the insult, “hammerhead”, which is why he now has the shark inked permanently on his arm. However, Hannaham’s ink is not the only evidence of his finding happiness and success.
“God Says No”, Hannaham’s first novel, was published in 2009. It follows Gary, struggling to accept his homosexuality in the face of religion and the American South. In July 2010, the book was featured on Entertainment Weekly’s list of best new paperbacks, and has received stellar reviews in publications from New York to Austin to Seattle.
Although openly gay, Hannaham is adamant about separating the author from his work. In an interview with The Village voice, he calls the novel’s main character a “shadow self”; though they have basic similarities, he differs greatly from his character. In class, he warns students against reading too much into a character based on background knowledge of the author, stating, “Unless you talk to the writer, you’ll never really know.”
Recalling parts of his childhood, one can see that Hannaham’s struggles were much different than Gary’s, and his tongue-in-cheek attitude about life-changing occurrences proves that he handles adversity a bit better than his main character. Hannaham remembers his childhood fondly, regardless of the taunts. His mother, who has since passed, was his greatest influence as a child and has continued to be through his adulthood.
Hailing from Yonkers, New York, Hannaham was met with adversity from the very beginning. Yonkers, “The City of Gracious Living” was sued by the NAACP for segregation of the school system and housing in 1980. 97% of public housing was constructed in a one square mile area in Southwest Yonkers, and City Council members vetoed proposals allowing housing to be built in the wealthier areas, where most council members lived. This decision trickled down into the school system, which was widely segregated by race and socioeconomic status.
“My childhood was largely defined by various busing programs to schools on the other side of the city,” says Hannaham. The city of Yonkers lost the suit and Hannaham, though never forgetting the effects of segregation on his childhood, moved on to greater academic endeavors.
Hannaham, though a published author and journalist, did not have a clear sense of what he wanted to do growing up. He majored in design in college, though the extents of his graphic work presently are funny musings about the choice of type and layout on the pages of books and magazines.
“It took me a long time to realize that what I’d always been interested in was language and words and meanings,” Hannaham said. “I was in a rock band, but I wrote a lot of odd lyrics which seemed more the point than the music.”
In 2008, Hannaham worked for the culture department at Salon.com, the closest he’s come to a full-time job. He now is a freelance writer and writing professor at Eugene Lang College and Pratt Institute. His teaching is one part of his adulthood that he feels is very influenced by his mother and her parenting style.
Hannaham’s various interests and influences make him hard to pin down.
He maintains an air of mystery even when discussing his current projects.
“I am working on a bunch of different things,” Hannaham says, before giving a laundry list of goals. “A story collection, a manuscript, a group of short pieces, and a series of wall text placards that contextualize works of art that for whatever reason actually can’t exist.”
Living near Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, Hannaham has strange, yet sensible, advice for living in New York City.
“Buy a piece of property in an up-and-coming neighborhood,” he says, “In a few years, your friends will marvel at how little you paid.”
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