Synopses & Reviews
The gifted and charismatic author of the acclaimed memoir The Prisoner's Wife delivers a bold and heartrending first novel that explores the silence of black women and illuminates the fragile complexity of the mother-daughter bond. Aya is a college student in Brooklyn contending with the challenges of life as a black woman and endeavoring to make sense of the bewildering legacy she has inherited from her protective and guarded mother, Miriam. A master of emotional withdrawal and deflection, Miriam embraces rules and order and eschews any and all tokens of intimacy, even as Aya craves love. Aya longs to know the truth about her father, but Miriam will only tell her that he died in Vietnam. Miriam's world is shattered when Aya, out jogging one night, is shot in the back by a white police officer. To hear the police tell it, Aya matched the description of a black man who had just committed armed robbery. As Miriam sits at her daughter's bedside in the hospital, she retreats into the recesses of her consciousness and finds herself transported back to her own youth, when her life took a series of fatefully tragic turns. In Miriam's poignant recollections of love and regret, author asha bandele employs the economy of poetry to render an unforgettable portrait of one extraordinary woman whose lingering wounds slowly give way to healing and a tentative hopefulness. A deeply penetrating work of love and loss, desolation and redemption, Daughter confronts timely and troubling issues. bandele's story is above all the story of a journey--from secrecy to openness, from the mute vulnerability of isolation to the eloquent power of connection. Praise for The Prisoner's Wife:
Review
Pearl Cleage
author of What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day and I Wish I Had a Red Dress
If silence is the cancer that kills our dreams, then asha bandele's Daughter is surely the cure for what ails us. As real and as terrifying as the news stories we don't want to read, Daughter forces us to look behind the headlines and see the human beings who live there. bandele's truth creates almost unbearable pain on the page, but her great gift is that she is able to find a path leading us out of that deadly quiet and into a song of sisterhood.
Review
Adrian Nicole Leblanc
author of Random Family
The silences that injustice feeds are so intricate and mutable that the mere possibility of expressing them is risky. Gloriously, in Daughter, asha bandele speaks from this impossible place. Let her take you there.
Synopsis
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 confrontstimely 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.
About the Author
asha bandele, features editor and writer for
Essence magazine, is the author of
The Prisoner's Wife and a collection of poetry. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her daughter.