The Subtle Art of Breathing

ISBN: 0965830888
Format: Paperback, 69pp
Pub. Date: August 2005
Publisher: Moore Black Press

Celebrated novelist asha bandele returns to poetry in a way a mother returns to show her daughter how to hold her newborn. A breath of fresh air for poetry enthusiasts. One of the the most honest, and skillful poets of her generation.

Daughter: A Novel

ISBN: 0743211847
Format: Hardcover, 266pp
Pub. Date: October 2003
Publisher: Scribner

Read a Review of Daughter

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.

The Prisoner's Wife: A Memoir
Click to order via Amazon

Format: Paperback, 240pp.
ISBN: 0671021486
Publisher: Pocket Books
Pub. Date: August 2000

Read Comments about The Prisoner's Wife

How did a beautiful, talented college student fall in love with a man serving twenty to life for murder? And why did she marry him? At a time when one in four black men are caught in the web of the criminal justice system, Asha Bandele shatters the myths of prisoners' wives and tells a story of embracing the beauty of love in the ugliest circumstances and of people's ability to change, to do better, to grow. Whether she is describing her restricted but romantic courtship with Rashid - when letters were like dates, like "whispers on the slow, blue-light dance floor" - or riding the bus upstate with the other wives and girlfriends, Asha Bandele creates haunting images and reflections so powerful and unique that they beg to be reread and savored. At the same time that she recalls the extreme ups and downs that accompany a relationship constantly scrutinized by guards and surveillance cameras, she confronts her own dark secrets and sadness. The love of a man with an ugly past but a firm belief in redemption is what heals her broken spirit and grants her the courage and confidence to embrace life again.

Absence in the Palms of My Hands: & Other Poems

ISBN: 0863160131
Format: Paperback, 128pp
Pub. Date: October 1996
Publisher: Writers & Readers Publishing, Inc.
 

Brown Sugar 4: Secret Desires

Edited by Carol Taylor

ISBN: 074346687X
Format: Paperback, 336pp
Pub. Date: February 2005
Publisher: Pocket Books

Contains the short story "My Brother's Wife" by asha bandele

Continuing in the bestselling Brown Sugar tradition, this fourth installment brings together the finest award-winning and critically celebrated up-and-coming African-American writers contributing sexy, scintillating, never-before-published short stories.

Silk sheets...jazz playing softly in the background. The many moods of Eros are explored in this rich and diverse array of black erotica, written especially for this Plume collection.

Brown Sugar brings together some of the most acclaimed voices in today's black literary world-Sapphire, Natasha Tarpley, Reginald Harris, and Pamela Sneed, among them. These titillating stories cover the full spectrum of black experience and identity as they reveal sexuality and sensuality in all their varied and exotic forms. From the subtle to the graphic, Brown Sugar embraces the ardor and passion of black love and lust, and will appeal to both men and women. Featuring both well-established authors and promising new writers, this one-of-a-kind collection represents the past, present, and future of black literature at its pleasurable and outrageous best.