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Summary: The Prisoner's Wife
Review: Bandele's creative voice reverberates in my mind. She is the quintessential lover, sparkling, faceted; she emerges from the pages of "The Prisoner's Wife" as an emotional heroine. Her relationship with Rashid reveals a heart strong enough and brave enough to stand on the surface of the Sun without melting. Bandele's capacity to love is her protective covering. The garment of love enables her to traverse love's dangerous places unscathed. She is a woman schooled inherently by dictates of a love that is unfailing. Bandele is the clean breath of a heart unblemished by life's challenges. Reading her books, "Daughter" is her latest novel, is to share her journey; sharing her journey helps one appreciate the complexity and grandeur of loving steadfastly and bravely. Bandele taps into her reader's feelings with the free expression of he own feelings.
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Summary: a refreshingly real take on the love story
Review: Upon picking up Prisoner's Wife, you already have an idea about the story. But this book makes you question everything you ever thought you knew about these type of romances.Marrying a man that is serving a 25-to-life sentence has to take courage. But then again love is never easy. We all have obstacles to overcome in an intimate relationship whether its lack of communication or the walls of a maximum security prison. This book is a page turner that you just cant put down.
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Summary: A Modern Day Romance
Review: The Prisoner's Wife by Asha Bandele is a great read. It is true when they say you can't pick who you fall in love with; love just kind of sneaks up on you and catches you by surprise.I thought the book was very candid and truthful. It was also very personal. I enjoyed reading what i felt was an honest account of this writer's life. I like her as a writer. I like the way she plainly and willingly states her love. She displays her love boldly and without inhabitions. In this book you see two beautiful souls find each other and merge in the midst of all the ugliness of the world. I really enjoyed the book and I highly recommend it to anyone who has ever been in love or is struggling with a love that they feel people won't approve of. This story truely reminds me of a modern day romance.
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Summary: a forbidden love
Review: the prisoner's wife is an emotional memoir that reveals a young black womans experience with pain, joy, love, and self-exploration. While volunteering in a prison, as a poetry reader, asha bandele's encounter with rashid, a prisoner, changed her life forever. with rashid, asha experiences what most would describe as a forbidden love and marriage. together they explore themselves and one another. their love withstands the weight of the prison system and the doubt of friends and loved ones. as a poet, asha's writing of the memoir reflects her poetic nature. the language of the book is beautifully pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle. This book captures the hidden reality that many women experience in their lives. asha provides other women with the comfort of knowing that it is o.k. to experience love outside of the social norm. with patience, desrire, sensitivity, and willingness a love can flourish in any condition.
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Summary: A Spectular Testimony!
Review: asha bandele's narrative detailing the discovery of the love she and Rashid, her husband, share is a strong narrative that confronts and questions all societal norms and culturally accepted terms through her personal testimony of a magnificent love found and claimed by two souls that played both victim and saviour to each other. A love that many search for, ask for, pray for, and travel aimlessly throughout life to find; only to title and name it, ultimatley accepting or rejecting it by community's standards as a "good" or a "bad" love. Her inclusion of us into her own personal journey of self-dicovery, self-assurance, self-love and self-hate, as well as self-acceptance is a riveting and compelling story of two souls, that society refused to allow to come together, who defied the unwelcomed, uninvited cultural qualifications and found, in each other, a love stronger than any that is revered by society whether it is solid and truthful or not. As long as it looks the part. Prisoner's Wife is a thoroughly intellectual, emotional compelling, and sensual read disguised as an easy, simplistic, and uncomplicated narrative. After reading this story, I fell in love with Rashid, asha's husband. For saving her, him, and ultimately . . . their soul.
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Summary: True Love
Review: I think that the book, The Prisoner's Wife, opens up the heart of any reader. In this book not only did asha find true love with someone else, but she also found true love within herself. The style of asha bandele and her poetic voice kept me turning the page to get to the end. Once I reached the end of the book I wanted to know more. Their love story was true and real there was no fantasy about it at all. What I loved the most about the book was what Rashid did for her as far as her mind and her spirit. I will be recommending this book to anyone who asks. asha bandele moved and provoked in me something that I did not expect to get from a book about a girl who marries a guy in prison. I actually was disappointed in myself for being judgemental before I even opened the book. From the first line, "this is a love story..." to the last, "see you in a minute" I was captivated and felt like I was falling in love along with asha. Her story is phenomenal.
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