The Prisoner's Wife by Asha Bandele: A Review

book reviews

The Prisoner's Wife by Asha Bandele

Though she never uses the word "feminist," or "womanist" for that matter, all the while asserting a belief in the rights of women, Asha Bandele’s memoir unequivocally puts a contemporary spin on the feminist slogan "personal is political." Written in the shadow of an increasingly corporatized and predatory prison system, Bandele presents herself as the blemished heroine of this tale without feeling the need to justify her relationship with Rashid, her lover and later husband who is incarcerated. That refusal to hide behind her power as the narrator makes her struggle to present her situation strikingly moving.

Bandele describes meeting Rashid as a college student reading poetry for a class in a New York State prison. Rashid’s attractiveness lies in not only his physical attributes, but also his spirit. Bandele notes that he related to her and the other students visiting the prison in a reciprocal way: "This is why Rashid stood out, not just with me, but with all of us. He never asked us for anything. We were talking like we wanted to learn something. We were talking like we wanted to heal…It was unifying talk" (p. 19). The exchanges Bandele presents are replies to assumptions and unasked questions of Bandele’s friends, relatives, and reader: what does he want from you? Why you? In the first quarter of her story, Bandele debunks generalizations about her relationship by showing that she, in fact, needs Rashid more than he needs her.

This dependency is what lingers long after Bandele closes her story. In the course of her relationship with Rashid, Bandele reveals that though she has the privileges of a middle class upbringing, this was not enough to save her from sexual abuse at the hands of men who would later feed her insecurity about herself as a Black woman. Moreover, loving parents and her talents as a writer could not save her from the prison walls she would later construct around herself as her own worst critic. The respect she feels from Rashid subsequently up old wounds, causing her to revisit attacks on her self-esteem and body by older, often predatory, men. Sometimes consensual, sometimes coerced, Bandele seeks to come to grips with the impact of sexual assault on how she views herself as a woman and a human being.

Bandele gives short shrift to her own role in her recovery, giving Rashid all the credit. Rashid is framed uncritically as her savior. Recognizing Rashid’s apparent transformation in prison and his gentleness overshadows any critical assessment of his Islamic views on women. For example, in the chapter "Between God and Religion and Rashid and Me," Bandele recalls:

Once Rashid and I shifted into romance, everything changed, and changed without warning. I became a sudden and unwilling audience for long passages from the Qur’an and even longer rationales on parts of the scripture which I found particularly disturbing…I told Rashid that I found no space for myself, my woman self in Islam. Everything I saw in the religion taught me I was supposed to be a good daughter, or else a good wife, but there was so much womanness in me between those two definitions" (p. 135).

Bandele excuses Rashid’s adherence to patriarchal religion as a reaction to a childhood devoid of guidance and mentoring. But such pardons do not help explain love in spite of, or because of, religious or political differences.

Bandele’s story is a memoir of learning about herself and Rashid, but The Prisoner’s Wife also reads as a handbook for the countless other women who are bound, in this age of mass incarceration, to enter into intimate relationships with Black and Latino men who are doing time "with life on the back." One of those women is introduced at the end of the book. We are in the moment with Bandele as she fights the urge to share with this young woman---who is just beginning the journey of a relationship with a newly incarcerated lover---the extreme highs and lows that the prison system imposes on one of the most difficult tasks of a lifetime: to connect genuinely with another person.

Does Rashid ever get out? That is the question with which I began the book. By the end of the book that question changed to "Does Asha ever get out?" Not her relationship with a man she clearly continues to establish a loving partnership with, but the prison of her isolation and loneliness that dissolves from recognizing that God, Yemaja, Ellegba, or whomever one places faith in resides in her ever-evolving soul.

Soon-to-be Portlander by way of E. St. Louis/Michigan, Kim Springer is trying hard to resist being SBW (SuperBlackWoman) and preserve some of her sanity through writing, teaching women's/African American studies, and watching Buffy. She's also founder of ColoredPublicRadio.com---dedicated to bringing people of color producers, writers, and stories to the forefront of public/community radio.