Something Like Beautiful: One Single Mother's Story »

A former features editor for Essence magazine, asha bandele is the author of two collections of poems, the award-wining memoir The Prisoner’s Wife, and the novel Daughter. She lives in Brooklyn with her daughter.

When asha bandele 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. But soon after Nisa was born, asha’s dreams were shattered. Her husband, Rashid, was denied parole and told he’d be deported to his native Guyana once released. Suddenly a statistic—a black single mother in New York City—asha kept it together on the outside while falling apart on the inside. Despite having a great job at a high-profile magazine and a beautiful daughter whom she adored, asha began drinking and smoking and stumbled into a relationship that opened new wounds—descending into depression when her life should have been filled with love and joy.

A lyrical, astonishingly honest memoir, Something Like Beautiful is not only asha’s story but also the story of thousands of women who struggle daily with little help and much against them.

Booklist (starred review)

Praise for THE PRISONER’S WIFE: “[bandele’s] writing soars with emotion. And the reader’s emotions soar as well, not because of shared experience but because her highly polished and skillful writing makes one feel her pain and joy.”