asha bandele is a poet, political activist, community organizer, journalist and novelist with an MFA. And as she often says, a statistic: a Single Black Mother. In this powerful and lyrical book, she takes on the myths about single motherhood and tells it like it is, confessing the truths of her battle with depression and alcohol, yet through her experiences as a mother raising a daughter by herself she offers hope for all women struggling to keep it together on their own.

SOMETHING LIKE BEAUTIFUL is asha bandele’s story as a single mother, but as she writes, “The particulars of my own life involve prisons and no parole, single parenting and shaky finances. But in a sense, they don’t matter, my particulars. What I know now all these years trying to climb out of a hole is that I am part of a long line of women, Black women especially, who believe we have no right to pain, rage, and sadness.”

Something Like Beautiful is more than a memoir; it is a book of poetry and politics, grief and inspiration; it is a confession and a call to action. asha writes in the tradition of Ntozake Shange, Audre Lorde and Nikki Giovani, with prose that is poetic and visceral.

asha bandele’s first memoir, The Prisoner’s Wife, about her marriage to an incarcerated man she met when performing her poetry at prisons upstate went through 4 printings in hardcover and 12 in paperback. The book sold through word of mouth and because of asha’s incredible spirit.

asha bandele’s book is available on amazon.com