Day 18 – An Underrated Book  One of my prize discoveries in literature last year was Daughter by Asha Bandele.  The writing and the message were both beautiful.  I hadn’t heard of this author and hadn’t heard anyone speak of her nor of her novels.  Daughter was published in 2003, but being read today is very modern and unfortunately deals with problems of today in the United States for African-Americans.  If you haven’t read Daughter, you should definitely take the time to read and savor the writing, where every word counts and none are wasted.

asha bandele is a journalist, author, and poet.  She was a features editor and journalist at Essence magazine.  Her memoir A Prisoner’s Wife depicts her relationship with her husband who was serving a twenty-two year life sentence in prison.  Her second memoir Something Like Beautiful: One Single Mother’s Story explores the outcome of that relationship and the birth of her daughter, Nisa and her struggle after her husband is refused parole and is deported.

“At nineteen, Aya is a promising Black college student from Brooklyn who is struggling through a difficult relationship with her emotionally distant mother, Miriam. One winter night, Aya is shot by a white police officer in a case of mistaken identity. Keeping vigil by her daughter’s hospital bed, Miriam remembers her own youth: her battle for independence from her parents, her affair with Aya’s father, and the challenges of raising her daughter. But as Miriam confronts her past — her losses and regrets — she begins to heal and discovers a tentative hopefulness.”(Daughter, back cover description)

My copy: Daughter, paperback 260 pages

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