Rating: 
Summary: You Never Know Where Love Will Find You
Review: This book has been a beautiful, inspiring account. Love laid down bare, anyone who has ever been in love can relate. Anyone who has any relative or someone they love in prison, this hts home for us. Seeing emotions or feelings you had printed before your eyes is enough to stop your breath. Her expressive writing is simple enough to be understood but not to simple where it can be considered plain and uninteresting. I read this entire book in two days and ready for my next go around. Asha Bandele has written a gem.
Rating:
Summary: Breathtakingly beautiful!
Review: I was speechless, shocked, compassionate, and full of mixed emotions. As someone who has never experienced having a loved one incarcerated, I feel as though this story was an eye opener for me. I was always warned to stay away from men in prison and don't even think about marrying one! Instead of being judgmental of asha and Rashid's relationship, I found myself cheering for them every step of the way! When their hearts ached, my heart ached. When they cried, I cried also. Those emotions validate what I taught to my senior English class when we were studying "Meditation 17" by John Donne - "No man is an island, entire of itself. Every man is a continent, a part of the main." What happens directly to one human being can and will affect each one of us indirectly. Although I've never met asha or Rashid, and probably never will, I know them and will remember them for the rest of my life!
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Summary: A BEST SELLER
Review: This book was so emotional and personal in my eyes. Asha Bandele is one of many great african american authors of this century. Reading this book is exactly what one who has never been through her situation needs to read because it lets all of us know how prison life really and truly is to a certain stand point. I TRULY LOVED THIS BOOK!!! Not everyone believes in the power of love but after reading this book it just might make a true believer in someone. It takes a very strong woman to take the path less traveled and in this case it's becoming or being the wife of a prisoner. This books gets down to the nitty gritty about a lot of things that go on in the life of an inmate and the loved ones that stand by the inmate that have to suffer also. For those who are curious about how it is or how it may be, I would 100% recommend this book.
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Summary: A Life Altering Story - Definite Must Read!
Review: I just finished "The Prisoner's Wife," and to say this book has changed my life is doing it an incredible injustice. This book has become a compass for me in my journey of self discovery and actualization. I strongly recommend "The Prisoner's Wife" to anyone that yearns for a relationship that embodies honest communication, uncompromising acceptance and unconditional love. With each page, Asha painfully and openly takes you through her journey and eventually lands you at the place of mutual respect and genuine love.This book was about so much more than loving a man. It was about love pure and simple. It was about releasing demons that kept love restrained and one sided. It is about have love unabashed and unashamed in any situation. This book went far beyond the issues of love and prison, it is a book of reformation. While I do not share in Asha's experience of loving a man in prison, I do share the pain that lies in a childhood of secrets the subsequent loss of memory that often accompanies it as a necessary means of survival. For this reason, "Prisoner's Wife," has left an indelible impression on my psyche. I now am compelled to learn more about myself who I really was. To learn to love that child that was not heard, praised and neglected and how she became a woman with no self-trust nor self love. Somewhere along the line I lost myself. I want to find her, I want to know her, I want to reconnect with her. I want to have the courage to just be, but most importantly I want the courage to love the skin that I am in. Asha's writing is stated to be for her but I believe it is more for us -the reader- to get us to that point where we all want to be. While the tears that flowed often during the initial reading have long dried, I have to say that whenever I reference back to an encounter with Asha and Rashid the tears easily resurface. THANK YOU ASHA, for giving my pain a voice in the world, and for helping me to feel just a little less alone. For before you I felt in total despair. This book enabled me to dissect my life, my issues, the root of those issues and more importantly, know that love can conquer all!
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Summary: What Real Love Is All About
Review: I am almost speechless after reading this book, a biography of a woman that managed to find love behind bars. Not a semblance of love but real love; unconditional love; emotional love. In a million years, I never thought I would be able to relate to this book but I had heard so many wonderful things about it that I just had to purchase it and I am so glad that I did. While I have known less than a handful of people that have done prison time and have never been involved with a man that has served, this book goes much deeper than that and deals with the issues that any woman must deal with at some point in her life. What issues? The definition of love and what we seek from a man. A lot of women search their entire lives and never find what asha bandele found as a visiting poet to a penitentiary. She found Rashid, a Muslim serving twenty years with life tagged on behind it for second degree murder. She found a man that understood her, a man that listened to her rid herself of all the demons of her childhood, a man that did not judge her when she revealed her previous promiscuous behavior, a man unlike her previous husband who was there physically but never touched her body or her soul. asha's word are so vivid and detailed that they are almost arousing in nature. I pictured all that she went through: the humiliation of being searched when she visited him, the negative comments from friends and family members who simply could not understand how she could love a convicted felon, the pain and anguish of her decision to have an abortion instead of trying to raise a child alone. While I felt her pain, I also felt her joy. The joy of a man telling her that she is perfect despite her physical imperfections. The joy of being able to get to know a man mentally for years before sex came into play. The joy of knowing that no matter what else went wrong in her life, someone loved her unconditionally. This book has truly helped me see the light. It has taught me to never take things like the ability to hold hands or lie beside a lover, even in moments of anger, for granted. I think that every woman should read this book because the honesty and candor of her words, the thoughtfulness of letting people into her life through her memoir, makes one realize that if she can heal, so can all of us.
Rating: 
Summary: A Hard Read
Review: This book was a hard read. It was a selection from my book club and everyone had a diffult time reading this. I thought that it was an interesting story but the writing was dull. I feel that Asha had alot of unresolved issues before she even met Rashid. She was not stable enough emotionally to be in a regular relationship let alone one with a prisoner. What really bothered me about this book is how she had this"poor me" attitude when she talks about the conjugal visits. Well, whose fault is that? She CHOOSE to marry Rashid and to be in that difficult situation. I found it appalling that Asha would try to get sympathy from the readers about a decision that she made. In end, I felt sorry for her. I hope she gets some sort of counseling.
Rating:
Summary: Indeed, a must read.
Review: What a great book. If you don't know someone in prison, this book will give you much to think about. She makes you understand. If you know someone in prison, this book touches home. No matter if it is someone you are in love with or a friend you care about, Asha has captured all of the emotion and thought that comes with incarceration. She meets a man...in prison...befriends him...comes to love him and eventually marries him...knowing he has 20 years to life in prison. This is a love story, asha bandele tells the reader that fact upfront. This book shows the reader love developing from a tiny seed into this fully blossomed flower, but exposes all of the little insects that may invade it, making it sick or even causing it to wither and die. Asha Bandele's words flow and pull you into her life and what she is experiencing. Indeed, a must read.
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Summary: An extraordinary, beautiful book
Review: asha can write (lowercase hers, not mine). asha can put pen to paper and make beautiful the most sordid situations. asha can make you actually feel the love that she has for her husband, Rashid. Until having read this book I'd always had an image of the kind of woman who marries a man while he's in prison. Pathetic, lonely, neurotic, dreadful self-image, scared as hell. And asha *was* these things before having met Rashid. Ultimately, she is brave and strong and sees beauty when she looks in the mirror. Even if you have no interest in the subject matter (God knows, I sure didn't - at least not initially), you certainly will by the end of the book. And you will revel in the language, in the clear, searing beauty of her words. She is a remarkable writer. I cannot wait for her next book.
Rating:
Summary: Captivating
Review: I initially purchased The Prisoner's Wife based on a television appearance during which Asha read excerpts from her book. The subject matter was interesting, though unfamiliar to me. I should admit, however, that it wasn't the book's topic that kept me glued to my tv that day. It was the way the author read her words. Like she was still feeling those words that day. As if she had just written them. I was captivated by her sincerity and also by her courage. Because it takes enormous courage to be that sincere. I thought to myself that if her story touched my heart through that television, then imagine having her words in my hands. I imagined what it must have been like for her to write all of that down. To live it. And then to offer it to all of us. I thought that I knew that this story would be powerful...but I had no idea. Who knew that I would find myself in this book? Not as a prisoner's wife, or girlfriend, or sister, or mother, or daughter. Because I am not any of those. But rather, just as a young woman who has experienced things. So many of the same things as Asha, even though I never expected that. Asha set out to tell a love story. I think that it would have been impossible to do that without a willingness to be incredibly open. But she was. So her love story was told. Splendidly. Honestly. With dignity. And I thank her.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best books I've read all year
Review: This is a compellingly and painstakingly honest look at life, relationship, personal history and the healing that can take place in a true partnership. Most importantly it is so obviously written from the heart - it rings of truth from beginning to end. Also, it is unusual and heartwarming to read a story that is not complete - not tied up in a neat little package. Reading this is a heart opening experience.
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