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estam1's review against another edition
4.0
"I was a mother, a single mother, a single Black mother. I was part of a tradition of women who do not bend and who do not break. This is what is said, this is how I now defined myself. As someone with no room for error."According to the author of this memoir, 60% of Black women in the US suffer from depression: this book is, in fact, an exploration of Bandele's own depression and how she escaped it.
Bandele describes depression in a number of ways in her memoir, but the most compelling for me were her words, "In the most simple terms, depression is a broken heart." Resulting from growing up with her own trauma as an adoptee and suffering early abuse, the author enters her relationships with temerity. She meets and marries an incarcerated man, Rashid, and together they have a daughter, Nisa. Plans for Rashid's release become altered when he is issued a deportation order to his native Guyana, and eventually, Bandele moves on. (It is not clear what ever happened to this order, whether or not he was still incarcerated at the time of the book's publication or if he was indeed deported, but there was evidence of his remaining a presence albeit via phone in his child's life). She enters a subsequent relationship with an abusive partner and eventually falls into unhealthy patterns of drinking and other damaging practices.
It is the author's dedication to her daughter that allows her to liberate herself. She comes to realize who she needs to be and why, and is able to find meaning where she had been unable to before. Most crucially, she learns to value herself.
This is a very personal book and Bandele shares a lot of very intimate information. While doing so, she provides necessary commentary on the lives of Black women and the circumstances that they face. It is also especially important as it provides testimony of how the relationships between incarcerated people and their partners are made so difficult by the system.
Bandele describes depression in a number of ways in her memoir, but the most compelling for me were her words, "In the most simple terms, depression is a broken heart." Resulting from growing up with her own trauma as an adoptee and suffering early abuse, the author enters her relationships with temerity. She meets and marries an incarcerated man, Rashid, and together they have a daughter, Nisa. Plans for Rashid's release become altered when he is issued a deportation order to his native Guyana, and eventually, Bandele moves on. (It is not clear what ever happened to this order, whether or not he was still incarcerated at the time of the book's publication or if he was indeed deported, but there was evidence of his remaining a presence albeit via phone in his child's life). She enters a subsequent relationship with an abusive partner and eventually falls into unhealthy patterns of drinking and other damaging practices.
It is the author's dedication to her daughter that allows her to liberate herself. She comes to realize who she needs to be and why, and is able to find meaning where she had been unable to before. Most crucially, she learns to value herself.
This is a very personal book and Bandele shares a lot of very intimate information. While doing so, she provides necessary commentary on the lives of Black women and the circumstances that they face. It is also especially important as it provides testimony of how the relationships between incarcerated people and their partners are made so difficult by the system.
doxiemama's review against another edition
4.0
I picked up this book because I had just read bandele's first memoir "The Prisoner's Wife" and was excited to find that she had written a second memoir. While some may go into reading this book as a sequel to TPW, it is really its own separate story. We enter the first chapter knowing her marriage does not work out, so the reader isn't wondering whether she ultimately makes it work with Rashid. This book is less about the dissolution of her marriage and more about her finding her identity as a single mother. It's definitely more of a character-driven emotional journey than one that has a clear chronological structure. While some readers may crave scenes with asha and Rashid (and at times I admit I wanted him to be a more present character on the page), their relationship is not the central conflict of this memoir like it was in TPW. In both books, however, bandele writes in such a raw, honest way that compelled me to finish both in just a couple of sittings.
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