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Published Jan 2009
208 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
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.
"Mothers single and married, black and white will find nurturance in her story." - Library Journal.
This information about Something Like Beautiful was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Asha Bandele is an author and journalist. A former features editor for Essence magazine, Asha is the author of two collections of poems, the award-winning memoir The Prisoner's Wife, and the novel Daughter. She lives in Brooklyn with her daughter.
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