'Something Like Beautiful' an 'essaysandthings' conversation with author asha bandele

It’s been 10 years since the release of asha bandele’s first memoir,
‘The Prisoners Wife’.
Her book about a love story.
Her love story about falling in love with Rashid,
a man, serving a life sentence in prison.
The story about how she came to love him
and what loving a man behind bars entails.
I read that book in less than 4 hours and was crying by page 35.
I’d never read anything so raw, so honest, so pretty in my life.
I’d never been so captivated by a story.
No one's words had ever leapt from the pages onto me,
or into me, like that before.
It was 'The Prisoner’s Wife' that introduced me to the memoir.
It was 'The Prisoner’s Wife' that introduced me to myself.
I wanted to know more about this sister;
the woman that I felt I had connected with.
I wanted to know more about the poet, this author that moved me.
When I asked for this interview and she kindly said "yes", I was elated; speechless.

Let me tell you, she’s everything that I hoped she’d be and more.
asha bandele is the truth. Period. She puts it on the line.
She’s real and conscious and connected and funny!
And she LOVES children!
Ours was not an interview.
It was a conversation; an easy conversation that I could’ve continued
for several more hours.
She’s you and me. She's beautiful and fly!
The funny thing is, I didn’t even want to talk about the books.
I wanted to talk about the genius BEHIND the books.
I wanted to talk about Rashid. her influences. asha.
I just wanted to talk...

LBE: What’s more comfortable for you, memoir or fiction?

AB: In certain ways I think fiction is more comfortable.
You get the cloak. But memoir is what comes naturally.

LBE: You and Sonia Sanchez inspire me. Who inspires you?

AB: Sonia Sanchez is a huge inspiration for me. Toni Morrison is also a huge inspiration. But then I have inspiration that people wouldn’t necessarily think about. Carolyn Knapp is an amazing writer. Kathryn Harrison, who has mostly done fiction but wrote a memoir called ‘The Kiss‘, has been inspiring to me. I’m inspired by Phyllis Wheatley. I’m inspired by Nawal El Saadawi, an egyptian writer, who wrote this incredible book ‘Women At Point Zero.’ She also wrote a memoir.

LBE: What’s your favorite book?

AB: It’s probably Toni Morrison’s 'Beloved'. But that may not be fair. I know how ‘The Color Purple’ changed me. I know how Sonia Sanchez’s 'Homegirls and Handgranades’ changed me. 'The Red Tent' changed me.
I love Edwidge Danticat. I don’t know that I have any one favorite book. I don’t know if I can pick one. That’s like saying which one of your children is your favorite.

Between writing ‘The Prisoner’s Wife’ and ‘Something About Beautiful', bandele, an award winning poet and journalist, has also served as a features editor and writer for Essence magazine, and a Revson Fellow at Columbia University. She is the author of two collections of poems and the novel ‘Daughter'.

LBE: Did you journal as a child/young adult?

AB: I think that journaling is really valuable. I journaled for most of my young adulthood. I journaled up until I had my daughter, Nisa. I was very specific about the way that I did it. I wrote before I talked. I’d get up in the morning and I would pray. I would meditate. And then I would write. I would not talk to anyone. I would not do anything until I wrote those pages.

LBE: What is your writing process? Do you have a routine? Or do you write when the muse strikes you?

AB: I used to have a very stringent routine when I began that was all predicated on me being a single woman. But once I had Nisa, a lot of that changed. Reading is very much a part of the writing process. I may not write for two months but then I’ll sit down and I’ll write 10,000 words in one day. With “Something Like Beautiful”, even with doing the rewrites, I probably wrote the actual words to it in about a week. (laughs) But that was a week that lasted for years. In the interim, I was reading, paying attention to Nisa and to my own feelings.

This is a love story, awake and alive. It’s a breathing document, a living witness. It’s human possibility, hope, and connection. It’s a gathering of Spirit, the claiming of dreams. It’s an Alvin Ailey dance, a rainbow roun’ mah shoulder. It’s a freedom song, a 12-string guitar, a Delta blues song. This story is a reprieve. –The Prisoner’s Wife

LBE: When did you know that you had this gift of language? When did you know that you could put the pen to the paper and create this…this music?

AB: It’s something that I’m learning now. I think that I definitely have a voice. I don’t know if there’s ever a place of security that you feel. People have so much to say about writing styles. I’m a lot less secure about writing than I am about parenting. I know that I have a voice. I know that I try to put my whole self into whatever I do publicly. I know that I try to not fake it on any level. I make great collard greens. (laughs) I know that I love children. I don’t know yet that I can write something that will move someone. I know that I try.

Rashid is fine as hell, which I tried not to but couldn’t help noticing the very first time I saw him. He looks like this beautifully symmetrical collaboration between Africa and India. – The Prisoner’s Wife

LBE: I wanted to ask you if you and Rashid are divorced. You never mentioned that in the book.

AB: We’re still legally married.

LBE: Is he in Guyana?

AB: He’s still in prison in New York. We won the immigration hearing in November. So we actually got his deportation order reversed. The government has appealed that and until we have an adjudication I won’t know what happens.

LBE: Does he see Nisa?

AB: I don’t go to prisons anymore. But they talk once a week. The last time she saw him was in September of 2007.

Had I ever really loved myself? Had I ever handed myself over to myself, whole and complete, willing and wanting, the way I have with lovers, wide open and without barrier?
Ever once had I whispered into my own ears the words I had whispered to my lovers: there is no place I will not touch you if it will please you, there is no place I will not love you – Something Like Beautiful

LBE: Sometimes while reading your work, I honestly have to look away. It’s so deeply personal, I feel like a voyeur. Have you written things that may have made Rashid uncomfortable?

AB: He hasn’t read 'Something Like Beautiful' yet. He read 'Prisoners Wife' along with me. He didn’t like the parts about our sex life. I told him that you cannot write a memoir about a love story and not mention sex. You have to put it in context and not make it something vulgar. But you can’t get around it. Sex is going to be mentioned. It’s what everyone is thinking about.
There’s a lot of information that’s out there now that makes me uncomfortable. But I know that if you’re going to tell the real story and you’re going to ask people to go out and buy your book, you can’t lie.

LBE: What role does Rashid play in the writing of the books? Does he help write them?

AB: (laughs) He’s thinks he did. But no, he’s not a writer. It’s not his training. Everybody thinks they can write a story because everybody has a story. But it takes training to be able to tell the story in a way that’s fresh and different. I went to school. I studied. I read.

LBE: What happened after the book came out. What happened to Rashid? Did he become a celebrity?

AB: Yeah. He definitely did. He’d be humble about it. Somehow, somebody would always say ‘You know who that is?' And I think for a lot of reasons that are probably valid, Rashid likes being recognized. Prison diminishes a person’s humanity no matter what side of the wall you work on. So I think the book elevated his humanity in his own eyes.

LBE: Do you ever worry about Nisa in the process? Now that she's here do you edit your writing?

AB: I edit for the truth. In the beginning of ‘Something Like Beautiful’ I use a quote by Anita Diamant, from the 'Red Tent' and that’s basically what I believe. You have to tell the truth. That doesn’t mean that I would let Nisa read the books right now. No, she’s 8. But she’s going to know anyway. That’s the thing that people forget about kids. They know it anyway.
LBE: They do.

“When I come home”, he promised, “you’ll never have to do anything alone again.” I believed him. I can’t imagine believing such a thing now.- Something Like Beautiful.

LBE: What are you going to do when Rashid comes home? You have to write that book!

AB: Rashid’s not going to live with me when he first comes home. It would all be too disruptive for my daughter. That was the plan at one time. But to just all of a sudden insert another person, even if it is the father that she loves so very much, would be too shocking to her little system. It would be shocking to mine.

This is a book about love and this is a book about rage. It's a story about the orbit of sadness that begins spinning in you and around you when you discover that the great life and love you had put together, the emotional balance and financial wherewithal, nearly everything you had counted on- everything I had counted on- disappeared, or, perhaps more accurately, shifted just out of focus- Something About Beautiful

LBE: Correct me if I’m wrong but I saw 'The Prisoner’s Wife' as a love letter to Rashid and 'Something Like Beautiful' as a love letter to Nisa.

AB: I think they’re all love letters to me. (laughs) They are all about me finding me. I’m not trying to be narcissistic or anything. I just truly believe that it’s about me coming to terms with me. But I do also think that my love for Rashid is this huge, wide, completely encompassing thing. It was too big for me to keep inside. I felt like people needed to know. And I feel that way about my daughter. She’s so beautiful. She’s so smart. I couldn’t even imagine having a child with her personality. She’s the best person I know.
The most amazing feeling is to know that you’re loved by children. When I die, they are going to say, she was relevant in the life of children. And as somebody who’s had their childhood taken, that is monumentally important to me.

LBE: Do you think about children’s book at all?

AB: I think about children's books all the time. I’d like to get Nisa to write one with me. I’m so moved by J.K. Rowlings. I’m a Harry Potter fan because children have to rely less on superpowers than they do on their own intelligence, loyalty and integrity. And in any Harry Potter story that is really what gets you through. I wish I could create some heroic characters like that. I have not yet pulled that from my little imagination. (laughs)

LBE: What’s next? Are you going to continue this story? 'Prisoner’s Wife' is part one. ‘Something Like Beautiful’ is part two. Are we going to get a part three? I could read this forever. This could just keep going for me.

AB: (laughs) I’ve thought about that. I’ve thought about writing a book called ‘Home’. A book about when Rashid does come home and what that’ll be like. I won’t do it in a contrived way. I’ll do it if I think there’s something relevant. I’m also thinking about writing other kinds of non-fiction that’s more personal but also research based. I’m influenced right now by books like ‘Noonday Demon’ by Andrew Solomon.
We’re also getting out there and seeing if there’s a film market for ‘The Prisoner’s Wife’. Maybe I’ll be writing a screenplay.

LBE: A movie would be awesome. I'll be right there in the front of the line. (laughs) asha, thank you so much. I appreciate you giving me this time.

AB: Thank you sister. Thank you.

‘Something Like Beautiful ‘ is available in stores and on amazon.com NOW!