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Photo Credit: Joyce Ravid
An award-winning author and journalist, asha bandele
first attained recognition when she penned her 1999 debut book, The
Prisoner’s Wife, a powerful, lyrical memoir about a young Black woman’s
romance and marriage with a man who was serving a twenty-to-life sentence in
prison. With the hope that they would live as a couple in the outside world, she
became pregnant with a daughter. A former features editor for Essence Magazine,
she returns with her latest memoir, Something Like Beautiful, the
continuation of her love with Rashid and its ultimate loss, with another
emotional disappointment and a serious bout of depression. She is also the
author of two collections of poems and the novel, Daughter. She lives in
Brooklyn with her daughter, Nisa.
Read an
AALBC.com interview with the asha
 Something
Like Beautiful: One Single Mother's Story
Click to order via
AmazonHardcover: 208 pages
Publisher: Collins (January 27, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0061710377
ISBN-13: 978-0061710377
Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
Read an AALBC.com Review
From the author of The Prisoner's Wife, a poetic, passionate, and
powerful memoir about the hard realities of single motherhood.
When Asha Bandele, a young poet, fell in love with a prisoner serving a
twenty-to-life sentence and became pregnant with his daughter, she had
reason to hope they would live together as a family. Rashid was a model
prisoner, and expected to be paroled soon. But soon after Nisa was born,
Asha's dreams were shattered. Rashid was denied parole, and told he'd be
deported to his native Guyana once released. Asha became a statistic: a
single, black mother in New York City.
On the outside, Asha kept it together. She had a great job at a
high-profile magazine and a beautiful daughter whom she adored. But inside,
she was falling apart. She began drinking and smoking and eventually
stumbled into another relationship, one that opened new wounds. This
lyrical, astonishingly honest memoir tells of her descent into depression
when her life should have been filled with love and joy. Something Like
Beautiful is not only Asha's story, but the story of thousands of women who
struggle daily with little help and much against them, and who believe they
have no right to acknowledge their pain. Ultimately, drawing inspiration
from her daughter, Asha takes account of her life and envisions for herself
what she believes is possible for all mothers who thought there was no way
out--and then discovered there was.
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 The
Subtle Art of Breathing
Click to order via Amazon
ISBN: 0965830888
Format: Paperback, 69pp
Pub. Date: August 2005
Publisher: Moore Black Press
Celebrated novelist asha bandele returns to poetry in a way a mother returns
to show her daughter how to hold her newborn. A breath of fresh air for poetry
enthusiasts. One of the the most honest, and skillful poets of her generation.
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 Daughter:
A Novel
Click to order via Amazon
ISBN: 0743211847
Format: Hardcover, 266pp
Pub. Date: October 2003
Publisher: Scribner
Read a Review of Daughter
The gifted author of the acclaimed memoir The Prisoner's Wife
delivers a deeply penetrating work — an emotionally shattering first novel
that explores the perils of silence and illuminates the fragile complexity
of the mother-daughter bond.
On a winter night in Brooklyn, Aya Rivers, a vibrant nineteen-year-old
black girl, is shot by a white police officer in a case of mistaken
identity. Her mother, Miriam, a rigid and guarded woman, rushes to the
hospital. As Miriam desperately waits at Aya's bedside, she falls back into
memories of her own youth, when her life took a series of tragic turns as
she struggled for independence and dealt with the end of her relationship
with Aya's father. But as Miriam's recollections of love and regret descend
upon her, this woman who has spent nearly every day of her life in an
emotional prison finds that her wounds slowly give way to healing and a
tentative hopefulness.
With the lyrical economy of poetry, asha bandele tells a powerful story
that boldly confronts timely and troubling issues. Daughter is an
unforgettable portrait of one extraordinary woman and her journey — from
secrecy to openness, from the silence of isolation to the beauty of
connection.
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 The Prisoner's Wife: A Memoir
Click to order via
Amazon
Format: Paperback, 240pp.
ISBN: 0671021486
Publisher: Pocket Books
Pub. Date: August 2000
Read Comments about The Prisoner's Wife
How did a beautiful, talented college student fall in love with a man serving
twenty to life for murder? And why did she marry him? At a time when one in four
black men are caught in the web of the criminal justice system, Asha Bandele
shatters the myths of prisoners' wives and tells a story of embracing the beauty
of love in the ugliest circumstances and of people's ability to change, to do
better, to grow. Whether she is describing her restricted but romantic courtship
with Rashid - when letters were like dates, like "whispers on the slow,
blue-light dance floor" - or riding the bus upstate with the other wives and
girlfriends, Asha Bandele creates haunting images and reflections so powerful
and unique that they beg to be reread and savored. At the same time that she
recalls the extreme ups and downs that accompany a relationship constantly
scrutinized by guards and surveillance cameras, she confronts her own dark
secrets and sadness. The love of a man with an ugly past but a firm belief in
redemption is what heals her broken spirit and grants her the courage and
confidence to embrace life again.
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 Absence in
the Palms of My Hands: & Other Poems
Click to order via Amazon
ISBN: 0863160131
Format: Paperback, 128pp
Pub. Date: October 1996
Publisher: Writers & Readers Publishing, Inc.
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 Brown Sugar 4: Secret Desires
Click to order via
Amazon
Edited by Carol Taylor
ISBN: 074346687X
Format: Paperback, 336pp
Pub. Date: February 2005
Publisher: Pocket Books
Contains the short story "My
Brother's Wife" by asha bandele
Continuing in the bestselling Brown Sugar tradition, this fourth
installment brings together the finest award-winning and critically
celebrated up-and-coming African-American writers contributing sexy,
scintillating, never-before-published short stories.
Silk sheets...jazz playing softly in the background. The many moods of
Eros are explored in this rich and diverse array of black erotica, written
especially for this Plume collection.
Brown Sugar brings together some of the most acclaimed voices in today's
black literary world-Sapphire,
Natasha Tarpley, Reginald Harris, and Pamela Sneed, among them. These
titillating stories cover the full spectrum of black experience and identity
as they reveal sexuality and sensuality in all their varied and exotic
forms. From the subtle to the graphic, Brown Sugar embraces the ardor and
passion of black love and lust, and will appeal to both men and women.
Featuring both well-established authors and promising new writers, this
one-of-a-kind collection represents the past, present, and future of black
literature at its pleasurable and outrageous best.
It is a must-have for every lover, as well as every lover of first-rate
fiction.
Author Bio: Carol Taylor is a former book editor now working as a freelance
editor and writer. She co-edited and contributed to
Sacred Fire: The QBR 100
Essential Black Books. |
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