prisoner wife
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post your first asha paper here
By americanculturesprisoner wife
December 3, 2006 at 3:57 pm
Corinne Neuman
Prisoners Wife, Part I
December 3, 2006
yourmomismad@yahoo.com
Humanities 6: Section 1395
The book A Prisoners Wife by Asti is an incredible memoir, about a transpiring love story that was never supposed to happen. Asti and Rashid are drawn to each other very awkwardly, and have the strength and courage to stay together. In most circumstances, I believe that most people would have never given Rashid a chance. Most would have walked away, convincing themselves that the feelings did not exist and the relationship was wrong. At first glance on the book, I assumed that Asha and Rashid were already married and developed a relationship before Rashid was incarcerated. However, the prison walls provided boundaries that would have otherwise not have existed. The prison walls forced the two people to talk, share together, and were unable to use outside distractions in order to develop the relationship.
I was drawn to Asha in the first Chapter, when she describes how she is bored by empty relationships. Asha was thirsty for life, wanting and desiring what all of us want. She wanted meaning, and she wanted a relationship that thrived. It would have been easy for Asha to settle in her marriage, and accept that the life she was living was her place. “While we had the Administrative part of it down, we were missing the creative. IT didn’t work because in the end, there was no end, there were no words, no ongoing dialogues, no private jokes.” (27) She was suffocating and knew that she needed something more. Asti really helped me realize the importance of not only seeking a happy life, but stopping at nothing to obtain it. “I wanted love in my life again. I wanted to be important to someone again. I wanted to be accepted by someone again.” (27) Selecting a mate on the basis of other people’s opinions or even on the basis of material value certainly has potential consequences.
Asha has an incredible amount of honesty, and is anything but fake. I believe that this is what makes her such a beautiful person. The strength that she has to continue her relationship was amazing. Her imagination was strong, and she used it to take her to other places that were beautiful – safe. She sought honesty, and a life that was not phony. Asha tells Rashid, “It was romantic, I told him, but we have a responsibility to be honest about ourselves.” (33)
When the relationship first began to transpire, it seemed that the story was going to become more about his healing, perhaps resurrection. However, that was not true. The story really focused on Asha’s healing, and building. When we first met Asha, she seemed like a nice student not aware of her troublesome past. As her trust and love with Rashid builds, the issues of her past that she was not even aware of surfaced. I believe that abusive history behaves much how Asha described, hides itself like it never happened and when a person is best able to handle it – it surfaces. Rashid was able to truly support her, listen to her and help her with her healing. He gained my respect, when he was so nurturing and caring to her. “I tell them about the man who would become my
Corinne Neuman
Prisoners Wife, Part I
Page 2
husband, how his spirit engaged me, engaged every one of us, and how by the openness of his spirit, it was I who would change.” (19)
The prison walls add an interesting element to this love story, as it sets boundaries to their relationship that would have never otherwise existed. My question is, would the relationship have flourished so if they had met in a coffee shop? In the real world, such a slow moving relationship would have been difficult to sustain. With sex a far removed possibility, the two are able to establish a friendship and create a secure relationship built on trust rather than passion. They allow themselves the opportunity to truly learn about each other, in a way that neither of them has shared with others.
Sex was a problem. One of the most difficult things that Asha struggles with throughout the relationship is turning her back and saying goodnight. The two lovers are never able to walk down a street hand in hand, watch the stars, wake up together, have sex, etc. Being able to do these things in a relationship is important, because it fulfills the human need of companionship and sexuality. Without it one becomes lonely, and unfulfilled. I do feel that Asha was not wrong in seeking to have other relationships; she needed it to continue her motivation for life. I went back and forth, deciding if her choice to see other people was the right one. I was happy to see she was honest and forthcoming to Rashid, but cannot decide if she made the right decision. My reasoning is that Rashid suffered from the same lack of companionship, lack of sex that she did. He wanted it, just as much as she did. The only difference was that she had the freedom to act upon it. I would have liked to see more on how Rashid was able to satisfy those needs, and not just Asha.
This couple was just happy to be with each other, their surroundings and other people just did not matter. They were so infatuated with each other, that they became completely oblivious to their surroundings. Since all of their visitation and correspondence took place between only them, it was hard to be influenced by others. Neither of them held anything back from one another, they had no reason too. Asha and Rashid had an incredibly deep level of trust, and compassion that developed between them so truly heartwarming. I struggle to have that level of trust and support with my dog, never mind with another human being. I absolutely loved how they danced together in the visiting room, without even noticing others reactions. This was important, and allowed Asha and Rashid escape to another place together through their imaginations.
If Asha had been me, one of the things that I would have feared is who Rashid is outside of the prison walls. This issue gets raised many times throughout the book, something that Asha’s friends warn her about. Asha doesn’t let it bring her down, and focuses on the deep love and trust that they have for each other. She tells her friends, “he valued my opinions! Can you imagine such a man? He wants to consult me withabout everything. Everything! He takes my advice.” (20) I think the reassuring aspect of the relationship for Asha, was she really felt cherished and respected by Rashid. He did, he really and truly
Corinne Neuman
Prisoners Wife, Part I
Page 3
cared for her. In fact, when she is seeing other men he says to her “When you spent time with some other man. Did he, any of them deserve you? Did they deserve you, your energy and your time?” (111)
December 3, 2006 at 8:51 pm
Page 1 of 2
Crystal Pardo
December 2, 2006
The Prisoner’s Wife – Part 1
American Cultures 1395
Pardofam4@sbcglobal.net
The Prisoner’s Wife – a memoir by asha bandele is a love story of a twenty five year old woman who is a poet, a student that majored in Black studies and political science and an organizer that was already married and on the verge of divorce because her and her husband had no connection anymore. Asha had fallen in love with her history and culture especially after learning so much in school about what had happened to her people. She had a huge sense of grief for what had been done to her people and for what they had lost. She was later kicked out of school in the second half of her senior year for protesting. One day her former professor asked her if she would come with him and a few other people to the Eastern Correctional Facility in upstate New York to participate in a Black History Month Program. At this prison is where she would meet and fall in love with an inmate by the name of Rashid.
Rashid was twenty nine years old and in prison serving a twenty year sentence for murder. He was a father to a nine year old boy that he could not raise, a lawyer without a law degree, a devoted Muslim and he too was married and on the verge of divorce. Rashid was not a beautiful writer, no singing metaphors, no high art, but he was expressive, honest and clear. (Page 30)
Asha gave Rashid her phone number, but it was almost nine weeks before she received her first phone call from him. A friendship started between the two and soon developed into love. People would ask asha how she could have fallen in love with a convicted killer, but she says that it is not the killer that she fell in love with, but rather “a man who wanted to become his own more perfect creation, a man committed to the transformation of himself, of the world.” (Page 20) Asha loved that Rashid was a man who valued her opinions and consulted with her about everything. He took her advice, made notes of her words and respected her enough to argue with her. (Page 20) Friends warned her that things might turn out like she would expect them to, but asha did not want to give up without a fight. She was not willing to give up the greatest love she had ever known just because it came from the worst place she had ever known.
After all the losses that asha had experienced in her life she knew she wanted love in her life again. She wanted to be accepted by someone again. It bothered her that her parents were disappointed in her for being kicked out of school. From this asha discovered that a terrific twister of loss and need is what carried her into loving Rashid.
Page 2 of 2
The Prisoner’s Wife – Part 1
American Cultures 1395
Years had gone by and Rashid and asha were now married and seeing each other through their first conjugal visit. The two got to know each other even more in their visits through questions about their personal thoughts, beliefs and backgrounds. Rashid would begin to explain his charges and how he ended up in prison. Asha thought about this and how the man that was murdered left behind a wife. She would see the face of this wife in Rashid’s eyes.
They discovered that they had many disagreements over how restrictive their relationship should be, but over all their love was so strong for each other that it seemed to over power any problems they would encounter. Asha spoke of how her past relationships were and that she had never got the love she wanted from them. Rashid told her about the type of man she deserved, a man that was not afraid of her, a man that loved her and her poems, a man that was not afraid to tell her when she was wrong and a man that was always willing to protect her. He told her that the man who could giver her all of that was him. (Page 112)
December 3, 2006 at 9:33 pm
Dave Bynum
Human 6 Online
American Cultures
12/03/2006
Medic811@sbcglobal.net
Prisoner’s Wife 1
In America, one out of every two marriages ends in divorce and when a woman says she is marrying a prisoner, one can only question her sanity. The Prisoner’s Wife by Asha Bandele is a personal memoir of her relationship with a prisoner that eventually led to marriage. This narrative explores relationship difficulties, racism, redemption and finding oneself. It is a story about “human possibility, hope and connection” (13).
Asha is a poet and her journey begins with visiting prisons to read poetry and help incarcerated black people. During this time she meets her future husband Rashid. After a few meetings she discovers they are “exactly the same and we [are] completely different…we were always meant to save each other” (17). She learned “about taking in different points of view, listening carefully, [and] reserving judgment” (19). He was a man committed to transforming himself and during this process, Asha discovers her own revelations.
During her early college years, Asha studied black history and culture. And in a white dominated society, “black was a metaphor for less than” (22). Although she grew up in middle class America, she embraced her black heritage. She had an “unmitigated rage” (23) towards society for the oppression. It was a black-and-white situation (23). Asha discovered a common thread between prisoners and black people; they are all “political prisoners…and race is always an issue” (23).
After two years of volunteer visits, Asha becomes Rashid’s girlfriend. They wrote letters and the “letters [became] like dates” (32). They shared their most intimate details and promised to tell each other everything. Once she became his girlfriend and not a volunteer, the guards began to treat her differently. She was strip searched and beginning to understand how Rashid must feel, to “know about cages, humiliation [and] forced exposure” (47). Asha expressed her outrage to Rashid but he was not emotional because “humiliation is the daily fabric worn to fray in the life he leads” (51). And she chose to live this life with him.
Eventually Asha wanted to know the details of the crime and other wives/girlfriends never discussed the crime. Rashid killed a man and was sentenced to twenty years in prison. He was “needing and wanting to transform…and his history demanded” it (68). Rashid believes there wouldn’t be “so many people dead, and there wouldn’t be so many people here, if we could ever see it coming” (59). If we could all know the consequences of our actions beforehand, would we change our actions?
Dave Bynum
Prisoner’s Wife 1
During their intimate conversations, Asha discovers unpleasant memories she had not seen before; she was sexually abused. She also remembers thoughts of suicide and attempted suicide. The memories she knew where out of her sister’s and mother’s mouth but now different ones were vivid (76). The years Asha knew “had been bent, slapped around, shoved, and kicked aside by silence and lies” (84).
Although some relationships can feel like you are trapped in prison (literally), Asha began to feel free. Rashid worked with her and he became her therapy. She discovered “that in the end [she] would not be defined by [her] experiences. [She] would be defined by what [she] chose to do with my experiences” (98). Again, Asha and Rashid shared a common thread. Through Rashid’s experiences, he learned to help others and Asha began to discover herself.
Eventually Asha began to feel lonely like Rashid was when she first met him. She needed human companionship and “told Rashid that because what he and I shared was bounded by the rules of the jail, [she] resolved to open up the other parts of [her] life” (106). Asha dated other men and even started a relationship. She shared these experiences with Rashid and he expressed that these men loved her with limited choices; he loved her unconditionally. The respect and love that Rashid provided made Asha realize he was her soul mate, her only love.
Rashid was “a man committed to the transformation of himself, of the world” (20). He accepted responsibility for his crime; he killed a man. The victim has been deprived of his right to live and his family has lost a father, a husband and a son. Thinking of the crime “is worse than doing the bid” (61). He will be forever tortured but how do you deal with it and what is truly fair? Rashid is spending 20 years in prison and he spends his time helping youths prevent the mistakes he made. Prisoners get clustered into a stereotype that never leaves any room for humanity (114). Maybe, “in time, he would be again, a man, whole, in control of his environment and himself” (77).
December 4, 2006 at 1:39 am
Jade Dant
The Prisoner’s Wife, I
12/3/06
italianbooty143@yahoo.com
Online Class 1395
What to say about this book that everyone has not already talked about? My first impressions of the beginning was that this book wasn’t going to be very exciting, at least not as much as Luis Rodriguez’s life. On page 13 what Asha Bandele says brings memories, “This is a love story, threadbare and used up, yet sometimes fat, weighty, stretched out of shape. It’s polyester, this story, man-made, trying to be pretty, not quite making it.” It makes me laugh at the notion that as a child all love stories have a heroine, knight and shining armor, and of course happily ever after. This type is a distorted love story with many silences, compared to Asha’s story of struggles and loneliness. As we all know Asha falls in love with a man named Rashid who lives his life behind steel bars while they came from two different worlds, one of poverty and one of money they ended up finding love in the same place. I also like Rashid’s comment, “Guyana. South America. It’s the most beautiful place in the world. That’s a hell of a thing in one life huh? To have seen the most beautiful place in the world and the most horrible place”(15). It just reminds me of how much people take for granted and very often skip over the simple things in life to find their beauty. Many of those prisoners didn’t come from a place of beauty, but a place of dirty walls, drugs, rats, and confinement. Though it seems to me, being a minority or race other than white even the most beautiful places carry hatred and violence. In Asha’s case abuse and rape, in Rashid’s case poverty and abuse.
Jade Dant
The Prisoner’s Wife, I
Could in simply fall in love with a prisoner? I think it takes some courage and patience. I like what Asha has to say about love and prison, “Could they reject the greatest love they’ve ever known just because it came from the worst place they’ve ever know?”(21). Can one really choose where love falls? This parallels with the treatment of family members and lovers of prisoners. I never thought about how they were treated when visiting their lost loves. Asha says, “being a lover, a girlfriend, afforded me mostly hostility and suspicion”(45). Strip searches and harassment was often the case for visitors, even the female prison guards held such hatred for small things like under wire for bras. The men searched anything they could even tampons, holding them up the light and also stroking satin undergarments. While being searched Asha makes a disturbing comment, but understandable with her past, she says, “Before I had even walked into the bathroom, o was gone, the soul of me was gone. It was disappeared out of my body, I was functioning but not present, split off and detached. It was a trick I had learned to do while having SEX”(48). This is a red signal for some sort of psychiatric hindering, later Asha digs deep and finds out it was a coping mechanism for abuse. It is a disturbing sight to watch someone detach from their body when taking some sort of scorning or abuse, because then you know it wasn’t the first time or the last. I wonder if many prisoners develop this coping mechanism and what does this mean for them IF they get out of the pen long enough to hold a relationship. Is this the place where the soul goes as someone commits a hateful act of pent up aggression?
Onto another subject, what about the day the cops come to get you. Asha asks Rashid if he felt them coming, and if he did what did he do on his final day of freedom.
Jade Dant
The Prisoner’s Wife, I
What would you do? What would I do if I knew the future? Rashid answers wisely, “You never see it coming, asha. This is what he says. There wouldn’t be so many people dead, and there wouldn’t be so many people here, if we could ever see it coming”(59). Could somebody of color change their future in a place drawn of racism? Could Rashid through all the years of abuse and wrong turns see the outcome, how can one escape their own skin color and destiny given to them by society to fail. I have no clue what it feels like to be born to fail in someone’s eyes? For anyone who reads this paper and does know what it feels like, where was inspiration found? Then as Asha argues with friends, “What is the moment your life changes course forever? How would you know that moment to identify it, to grap it up out of air?”(66). I think that is a major problem in youth’s eyes and maybe anyone because they can’t see that moment where decisions made there are decisions forever. How can a kid grasp that concept when they live in a world of fantasy games where death is never really game over and that decisions can always be saved or erased. What are we teaching our children?
Asha seems like a roller coaster ride of ups and downs, where Rashid is just a steady stream of water. Asha like Rashid has attempted suicide with not a will to die, but without a will to live. I guess I can find the logic of the separation where in one area you plan your death and the other it just happens to find you through sadness, as just a way out of living in pain. In Asha’s case the worst thing is, “I [she] learned how saying no can get you beat”(91). No is supposed to be a safe word to say when thing are unwanted and the fact Asha thinks the opposite is very sad indeed. At the end of the reading Rashid opens Asha’s wondering eyes even more, into a world of being Rashid’ s possible wife.
Jade Dant
The Prisoner’s Wife, I
Would they be husband and wife if the prison walls never existed and never gave the distance they needed it times of disagreement? I guess we will find out as we read the rest next week.
December 4, 2006 at 2:56 am
Dawn Rash
The Prisoner’s Wife
November 30, 2006
dawnkrash@hotmail.com
Humanities 6 Online
I am drawn to this story and character considerably more than any other subject that we have delved into in this class. I tend to identify with Asha on many different levels. I don’t believe that she was crazy or even morally wrong to fall in love with Rashid. We can’t help who we love; who touches our being in ways that are and needed. We may sometimes get the surprise of our lives in finding that the person who is the most influential, trusted and accepting of our true self is found in a place least expected and not necessarily where we want to go . Asha says, “I couldn’t imagine that the God I knew would have sent me the love I always wanted, the love I always needed, only to position it behind an unscalable wall.” (38) I was touched by the way that Asha describes the beginning of her relationship with Rashid completing both sentences with, “a human being fighting off loneliness while craving solitude, needing an open love, long honest discussions, a quiet touching at my/his core” (17)
Asha poses the question to her friends who don’t understand her life, “Could they reject the greatest love they’ve ever known just because it came from the worst place they’ve ever known?” That is a great question. How easy would it be for us to walk away from a person who not only is committed to transforming himself, but who truly values the person you are? That kind of relationship is a rare commodity in the best of worlds. If any of you have been blessed with a relationship that is truly nurturing, supportive of emotional growth and stands up in through both beauty and hard core ugliness, would you walk away from that relationship? The relationship had to grow and revolve around Rashid’s incarceration, but the two of them managed Dawn Rash – The Prisoner’s Wife
to make it work for the most part. Asha points out that there is never enough space in a correctional institution for a human being to live. (37) She says that in order to survive, you must expand not only what you believe, but how you go about believing it. On visiting days, Rashid and Asha were able to draw into themselves and block out the rest of the world to the best of their abilities. ‘The prison with all of its efforts to keep us unsteady, uncomfortable, and unable to love became my adversary. Its stance against love automatically made me take a stance for love.” (72)
I think that one of the biggest safety issues for Asha in Rashad was that she knew because of his own background that he would not be judgmental in unraveling her past. In the long run he became a huge source of healing. Sexual abuse in childhood can live in ones soul and create a lifetime of pain, bad choices and worst of all a feeling of guilt in the victim. The greatest gift that Rashid gave Asha in my opinion was helping her to gain the freedom that comes from perspective and acknowledgment that the fault lie in the adult, not the child. It was at that point that she was able to grow as a person. It was kind of ironic that her growth lead her away from Rashid. The years of riding the prison bus and living in such a small world had begun to take their toll. As she began to feel whole, she understandably needed to expand her life. I was surprised by understanding that Rashid gave Asha on this point of monogamy. He gave her wings and let here go. There is an old saying, “ If you love something, set it free, if it comes back to you it is yours, if not, it never was.” I think that Rashid gets that saying, it shows in his patience even though he is hurt and disappointed with Asha’s decisions. I was touched by the questions that he asked, Asha on page 111, “So did they deserve you?” What a profound question! That question would Dawn Rash- TPW
have to make Asha go back to the value of her own self worth. For the first time in her life she could answer that question figuratively, if not literally. Maybe by hearing Rashid verbalize his thoughts about her many wonderful qualitites and what he believes that she deserves, she will question her recent choices.
December 4, 2006 at 3:14 am
Kimberly Murphy
Human 6
Prisoners Wife 1
Page 1
In asha Bandele’s memoir, “The Prisoner’s Wife,” asha shares with us her most private thoughts and her deepest sorrows. She also shares with us her own true love story, a love story that was never meant to happen, but did. asha was a young woman who loved poetry and Black history, and her most prominent love was her love for a prisoner, Rashid, who was convicted of second degree murder.
When I was reading the memoir for the first time I kept asking myself, how can this woman who seems so intelligent and cultured fall in love with a murderer? I was baffled because most woman who are married to prisoners are married to them before they become incarcerated, but in this case asha met Rashid and their dates and courting all happened through letters, telephone calls and visiting hours at the prison. In the memoir asha answers the question that I am sure all of us wanted to know, “I’ve explained to people that I didn’t, despite what it would seem, fall in love with a killer. I fell in love with a man who wanted to become his own more perfect creation, a man committed to the transformation of himself, of the world. And the world he imagined was like the world I imagined. It was a place that was just and fair and safe and livable. We could meet there, in that place. We could meet there as creators. We could meet there as equals,” (20). After reading her answer I felt like she was right, she did not fall in love with the man Rashid was when he was involved in the murder, she fell in love with the man he became after the murder. She fell in love with the man that prison and himself had turned him into. Inside the walls of the prison he had nothing but time to think about his crime and to ask for forgiveness from God and the family of victim. He had time to think about the man he wanted to be when he was let out of prison, a man who would make his family proud. “But you know, as you get older, you want to take responsibility for all your life. Because if you live long enough, you do good things too. And I began to want to claim the good I had done. But if I was responsible for that, then I had to be responsible for the bad, too, right?”(23). Rashid knew what he had done wrong and he took responsibility for it like a man, and I believe that is one thing that asha loved so much about him.
During asha’s youth she looked older than she really was and that got her into a lot of trouble. She was physically abused and raped by men, and she began to believe that somehow she deserved this. She felt that all of the abuse she had suffered as a child was what had made her feel so empty in relationships, until she met Rashid. “Maybe Rashid being a presence in my life then, emotionally consistent, nonabusive, and loving as he was, allowed me to be able to face that which has contorted me for so many years,”(83). I thought that the memoir would be a story of asha helping Rashid to heal from the crime he committed but it was the exact opposite, it was a story of Rashid helping asha to overcome her childhood and realize that she is worthy of a wonderful man and that she did not deserve to be abused the way she was.
Reading asha’s memoir made me think of the relationship between Pat Sonnier and Sister Helen Prejean in “Dead Man Walking.” Their story is a lot different than the story of asha and Rashid, but it does have one main theme in common, love. Sister Helen
Kimberly Murphy
Human 6
Prisoners Wife 1
Page 2
Prejean opened herself up to Pat’s world in prison and she found out that even though he was convicted of murder, he was someone who she could fall in love with. She spent so much time with him, the person he was inside of prison, that she fell in love with him. I think the same holds true with asha and Rashid. I think that once people are incarcerated they become a different person. I don’t think this is true with all prisoners, but I do believe it to be true with those who seek forgiveness for the crimes they have committed. Inside the prison walls all prisoners have is time. They have time to reflect on everything they have done in their lifetimes. Don’t get me wrong, I believe that criminals deserve to be in prison serving their time for their crimes, but I do believe that a man can come out of prison a better man than he was before he went in.
I believe that another thing that keeps their love so strong is the barrier of the prison walls. They do not get to see each other everyday like normal husbands and wives do. They have space from each other, time to miss each other and year for one another. They aren’t constantly bumping into one another and having petty fights over whose turn it is to drive the kids to school. When the see each other during visiting hours it is just about them, and their love. “And this is where the prison actually served our relationship; it forced us to be apart, and during that time, that was probably a good thing. I hate to say it but the separation probably saved us,” (95).
asha knows Rashid only as he is in prison, and the way they love each other really gets to me. I am a sucker for love stories and this one is a great one. Hopefully their love will be enough when Rashid gets out of prison. According to his website he is up for parole next month, so hopefully for the sake of his wife and children he will get out and he will be the man he has always been to asha in prison.
December 4, 2006 at 5:25 am
Donna Blanchard
The Prisoner’s Wife, Part 1
December 3, 2006
moxiedonna@gmail.com
Human 6, Section 1395
The Prisoner’s Wife is not only a love story, but a story of self-discovery, a journey of completion and understanding. As Asha and Rashid are discovering each other and learning about the other, Asha is confronting and dealing with a history of sexual abuse and emptiness. “There were so many possible triggers for absolute despair: a new item about an abuse child, a friend touching me on the leg in a way that seemed familiar, ancient, and terrible” (92). By opening up to Rashid in a way that she has never opened up to anyone before, I believe that Asha finds that we can’t ever completely eradicate our past, that it is what shapes our present and how we deal with the past shapes our future. As she and Rashid spend so many hours talking and learning about each other, they become intimate in a way that many couples never do.
It’s easy to want to condemn women for falling in love with inmates. And, perhaps, some women are lonely, are desperate enough to fall in love with a man who is doomed to a life behind bars – maybe because it’s the easiest way, because there is no absolute way they will ever be truly alone without police nearby. But in becoming intimate with someone who is in prison and with whom you are never truly alone, I believe there is more opportunity to open up and to say things that so many couples never say. In hours-long phone conversations that replace dinner and movie dates there is nothing to do but talk. Talk about the past, their histories, their presents, their hopes for the future. Talk about things that they think but wouldn’t ever dare share with their closest friends. There is an intimacy in those phone conversations and I believe each conversation is cherished because it is sometimes the only contact.
Having worked in a jail and seeing the written communication between prisoners and their girlfriends or wives, I always felt a little voyeuristic in looking through the letters (we always had to check them for threats of suicide, escape, planned crimes, etc.). The letters became an outlet, another form of fleeting intimacy between lovers. There would be drawings for children and drawings for family members, dedications of love and respect. Sometimes the letters would be sexual, longings for moments of intimacy between the couple. Those were always the hardest to scan, the most embarrassing – and I would go to the end to make sure nothing else had been said before stamping the letter with the jail’s name and sealing it. Each inked stamp was an invasion on those letters, a way of telling the person that we knew what they had said, the ways they longed to touch their girlfriend or their wife.
When Asha takes the van to the prison to see Rashid, it seems like two hours of forced ignorance. There are so many women on the van all going to the same place for the same reason but they seem reluctant to acknowledge each other. “We tried to sleep without touching each other, without taking up space that didn’t belong to us” (43). Instead of becoming familiar, in taking comfort in their sameness, the women chose to ignore it – to pretend that it wasn’t there and that each of them was different or
Donna Blanchard
The Prisoner’s Wife, Part 1
or better than the other. “Their emotions were tucked into the corners and the folds and the wrinkles of their flesh.” (44).
Going through security at the prison is often a physically intimate and embarrassing experience – I’ve been there. The guards can sometimes see more of the visitor than the inmate can ever hope to see. Asha speaks of being strip-searched after the metal detectors pick up on the underwire in her bra, of being forced to go into a bathroom with a female guard who knows as well as Asha does that there is no contraband, just a thin, flexible piece of wire that couldn’t harm or cut anyone no matter how it was wielded. And the female guards rages against Asha when she can’t fight back against her male superior – forces Asha to humiliate herself by lowering her pants and opening her bra. It is all power – the power the male guard holds over his female subordinate and the power that she wields over Asha and the other women there to see lovers. Forcing someone else to endure humiliation and embarrassment is a way to rage against forces we cannot fight.
There are ways that Asha and Rashid’s relationship is freer than conventional relationships instead of more restrictive. While they don’t see each other as much and don’t always have the freedom of touch and physical intimacy, they have words. Words are powerful tools – they can build and they can tear down. In the beginning of their relationship, Asha acknowledges that the separation they endured was probably the best thing – “no one can live in the throes of that sort of intensity and anger for too long” (95). Asha was angry and raging as she dealt with the abuse – she was not emotionally able to handle any sort of physical intimacy and I believe she probably would have run from the relationship if physical intimacy was present. While Rashid isn’t perfect – no one is – he helped Asha confront and handle her past. We are unable to change our pasts, but we are able to look at them, learn from them and move forward. That is the only thing each of us can do – whether or not we choose to do so is up to us.
Asha goes to Rashid and asks for his help in confronting the abuse. She opens her heart and soul and waits for him to reject it, to refuse to help her. But instead he agrees, chooses her, tells her he won’t leave her. Her promised that he would not leave her and that his love would be bigger than all of her past, all of her wounds and scars. “…and when he did that my soul sat down for the first time that I can ever remember, it sat down and it rested” (101). Those simple lines, that poignancy struck me more than anything I have read in a long time. To know that peace and that contentment is something I believe we all strive for – to know that someone can find that peace in their soul is reassuring to me and gives me hope that I will one day find the same.
In finding her peace and discovering herself, Asha begins to distance herself from the prison and the repression it signifies. She distances herself from Rashid, tells him that she has to open up other parts of her life in order to justify having him. She cancels dates and writes less frequently. In an essence, as she opens her life to the culture around her she closes off her relationship with him. She begins to crave physical
Donna Blanchard
The Prisoner’s Wife, Part 1
intimacy and the need for human contact – gets it from other men when she can’t get it from Rashid. They try to have an open relationship but it is a one-sided open relationship. There is no way for Rashid to have a physical relationship with any woman who is not his legal wife. I believe that Asha is with the other men as a way to deny that she is in love with someone who is in prison, someone she can’t have fully until he is released. I believe she rages against that by being intimate with other men in his place. Rashid gets Asha to confront what she deserves and what she doesn’t deserve – she deserves attention but the men she gets it from don’t deserve the time and the energy she puts into them – “You deserve a man who will always protect you. Protect you with his life if he has to” (112).
December 4, 2006 at 5:49 am
Jereme Robinson Page 1
Prison Wife #1
December 3rd, 2006
Preludekid212@aol.com
Human 6 – Section 1395
The Prisoner’s Wife is a very interesting love story that kind of throws you for a couple of twist here and there. The author, Asha Bandele, who is the actress and main character of the story and at the same time the narrator brings a lot into depth of what is it like to fall in love with a man in prison. The story was hard for me to understand because I keep asking myself how a woman would want to marry a man that is in prison, to me that just doesn’t seem like a happy life to me. The narrative of the story talks about what it is like to meet your true love, a man that is spending twenty years in prison for participating in a murder. She said she feel in love with this killer the first time she saw him. Throughout the story the question of why do you love this man and why would you marry a man in prison comes up a lot. She reply’s on page 20 saying, “I fell in love with a man who wanted to become his own more perfect creation, a man committed to the transformation of himself, of the world” (20). Not really sure what she means by that, but it sounds like she accepts the fact that he is a killer and believes he did this to find himself in the world, which is very disturbing to me because I believe once you are a killer you are always a killer.
Asha’s love, who name we found out later in the story is, Rashid creates a friendship and trust that Asha has never felt before. Asha explains that Rashid is her teacher in life and consular in what things to do and what not to do. As the story goes on you find out that Rashid isn’t such a bad guy. I mean he made a poor choice and is now suffering from it but I think he is feeling the effects that Foucault explains in his stories. The feeling that
Jereme Robinson Page 2
Prison Wife #1
prison is a place were with discipline and punishment respect and moral come into place. On page 20 he talks about how prison has made him a better man and created a more polite and well respected person. He goes on to say on page 23, “If you live long enough, you do good things too. And I began to want to claim the good I had done. But if I was responsible for that, then I had to be responsible for the bad too, right?” This shows that has taken responsibility for his actions and is ready to make good.
Asha Become lonely and couldn’t live with the fact that there relationship was going to be lived inside the walls of the prison. She needed human companionship and “told Rashid that because what he and I shared was bounded by the rules of the jail, [she] resolved to open up the other parts of [her] life” (106). Asha started dating other men and working on other relationships then the one with Rashid. She meet with him to tell him about the other men in her life and how see just couldn’t be hurt anymore about the situation she was in with him. Rashid said, “When you spent time with some other man. Did he, any of them deserve you? Did they deserve you, your energy and your time?” (111) This quote really shows how much he loved her and wanted this relationship to work out with Asha. I think Rashid is at a point now where he looks back on what he did and wishes he didn’t make that decision. Asha at the end of this reading go into a conversation about what she deserves and what he can give her. They both agree that Asha deserves to be with someone that can make her happy and Rashid comes to a turning point in the acceptance that she isn’t his legal wife and tells her, “You deserve a man who will always protect you. Protect you with his life if he has to” (112).
December 4, 2006 at 6:05 am
Corrine and Jade raise good questions about the strengh of Asha and Rashid’s relationship outside of the prison walls. I know of no couple that started a relationship with years of friendship and trust and no sexual contact. I would like to believe that their relationship would have been just as strong on the outside. I would like to believe that they would have recognized the same value in eachother and had the ability to wake up together every morning. I also know that some of the most healing and beautiful relationships are not meant to run beyond what is meant to be. While always treasured, a relationship that is based on healing and helping sometimes leads to both parties going their separate ways in the end.
December 4, 2006 at 6:06 am
Donna – I was trying to find the words to describe a difference about their relationship and you hit on the head.. everyday couples are distracted with day to day activities and busy lives… although they had a horrible situation, it was beneficial as well. They took the opportunity to communicate and grow.
December 4, 2006 at 6:40 am
Ryan McGraw
The Prisoners Wife
True love is unconditional, and this story is one of the few that defies too prove it through and through. Asha is a genuine soul in the accounts she writes about, talking about the way love is supposed to be and how laughter and long nights are the passions that a real women desires. “None of us know tomorrow, only this moment, now, this time, already recorded in history” (21). She writes in a style that is through, without being too wordy. Her poem ability definitely comes out in her story writing.
She writes about her accounts with Rashid and how she longs for their “dates” together. She takes a bath, gets rid of her surroundings and focuses in on the letters she receives from him with no distractions, just as a real date would do. Asha speaks about love in a different light, through iron bars and phone calls and letters. She feels things that she said most women never feel in a marriage. The passion she has with Rashid is riveled only by her love for progress through education and writing it seems. “We have never abandoned our journey” (34). Asha recalls the eight years they have spent together, building on their friendship and communication, something her and her ex husband could never do. When she spoke of love with her ex husband, all I could think about was lust. It seems to be a thing that drives a lot of young people around me. Lust is only a fear of love and connection. I don’t believe you can build true love from lust, but only if you have rock bottom support and trust. Asha has this from Rashid, and there is no lust, only the up most respect, trust and communication that could never be paralleled by a free man.
“This is how we were: perched at the edge of an airplane, thousands of miles above an expansive and unknowable landscape, wondering, when the time came would our parachutes work, would all those lessons we’d learned that had brought us to this day, be in any way useful…”(54). No. When loves comes at you and you are not the first to react, there is sometime inside of you that embraces whatever it can to believe and hold on. It’s the feeling of not being alone, of being a part of something that exists where the highest level of human capacity is being represented at you. I imagine the euphoria, or “oxygen” Asha speaks of when seeing Rashid on these pages, is the uncontrollable emotion and gland inside your body that seems to make everything else numb and pointless. No lesson, no words, no anything is remembered; only that second of that moment of that time can be seen and sometimes not even heard. Her words in this part of her story touch me so much because I feel a strong relationship to the feelings she has. It’s weird, almost funny to read about someone that has the same feelings as you do, but for someone else. It’s like turning on the radio and hearing a song that you really think was written for you it sounds so true. Personal feelings alike, I could not put the book down by this point.
Rashid really isn’t mentioned as much as I thought he was going to be by this part of the story. Its interesting that she decides to write to much about her feelings for him, yet not describe him as much as she could have. “And that question hung between us by a thin rope until finally it fell, a loud, violent, crashing fall.” (57). Rashid wanted Asha to know his past, to ease her pain on the outside, and she knew it but she was afraid that she wouldn’t have the same feelings after she herd what happened. It’s the same instance of not talking to your pitcher in the middle of a no hitting game. He’s doing so well, you don’t want to screw up the mood or play. I believe this was a reason she didn’t want to know anything yet she was in euphoria and having a wonderful time inside her own head with love and the idea of them. Truth is a heavy hitting object sometimes. It can ruin life’s’, relationships and families. “There wouldn’t be so many people dead, and there wouldn’t be so many people here, if we could ever see it coming” (59) is all Rashid has to say in the words of Asha so far. “Dancing with Rashid has made me believe my life didn’t change when I told people it changed. My life changed way before the first phone call…” (66) “Before Rashid I could never rest in love.” (79).
“I could no longer have someone come in a rescue me from my bad dreams” (100) Throughout this book I have found her writing absolutely soul lifting for me. I have been having a hard time really adjusting to the story, because I like usual as I have been told many times, I read to deeply into what is going on rather then just look at it for face value. Unconditional love has so many words I don’t think a book could describe it. The way she asks Rashid if he forgives her for her past, and how he doesn’t care really touches me and helps me understand there is always something better out there, waiting. There communication is perfect in everyway, and each time she comes to visit, regardless of the odd sexual encounters with the prison guards touching her underwear and women searching her bra in the bathroom, she does it blindly, because love takes precedence over every other feeling and pain, because its genuine and true. When she shares it with Rashid they are more powerful and happy then ever before.
While reading this first half of the book, I really related it to my own life and love and it was hard for me to concentrate in certain aspects of what she was talking about with Rashid because I got caught up with the amazing words she spoke and drifted into my own world, wishing it could be half of what hers feels like. I have been nose in the book since page one. I would like to leave with this quote. “And it was because of how kinds and smart and loving he was that seemed particularly unfair, that when the feelings of freedom began to stir, they only began to stir inside of me. Not inside of us.” (103)
December 4, 2006 at 6:43 am
I couldnt help but picture the waiting room at San Quentin for those of you who went as it relates to the story of Asha. The women outside taking pictures with her friends as she was about to get married, the razor wire fences, dead grass, the execution chamber. Our trip was for lack of better words unreal. Defenately a life changing experience for me. If any of you ever have a chance to go, defenately do so, but remember who you are before you leave.
December 4, 2006 at 6:45 am
Kimberly – i really liked your reference to sister prejean. right when i read what you wrote i knew what you were talking about. very nice.
December 4, 2006 at 5:05 pm
Dawn, I agree with you when you say we can’t help who we fall in love with & Dave when you say that a woman who is marrying a prisoner can only question her sanity. Both of your statements are true and hit home for me. I also can relate to asha because I only knew my husband for 2 months before he went to prison for 2 years. We developed a stronger friendship that lead to us falling in love through prison walls, but it was better for us to get to know each other more before we began our life together. I got to see his true side rather than that guy who is trying to look cool in front of his friends out here. I questioned it too at first, but I believe that our love is much stronger now because of it. I don’t know how well it would have worked out is he had to serve 20 years like Rashid, but through those 2 years time flew by and it didn’t seem long at all. I was able to visit him, write and talk on the phone. Those things kept me stronger.
December 5, 2006 at 4:29 am
Ryan – I hear you man with the way to feel. I have spent some time in jails with my career and i could just image the way is would be like. I mean having a relationship where someone is always watching and you always feel like i can’t eascape the walls.
Dawn – I agree with what is say about how we can’t controll who we fall in love with but i mean falling in love with a man that is a killer is a desicion that only she made so she has to live with the life style of having a relationship within the prison.
December 5, 2006 at 5:09 am
Melissa Cook p1
Prisoner’s wife part one
12/4/06
eskimomissy@comcast.net
Human 6, sect 1395
I just got done reading the first part of The Prisoner’s Wife and it is a commanding memoir written by asha bandele. In many ways I found myself relating to her life history and at the same time unable to relate at all. I went on the tour of San Quentin last Friday and I tried to place myself in her shoes as if I was too visiting my husband there, and I found it very hard to do. When I arrived at San Quentin to meet Judith there was a large gathering of family taking pictures with the beautiful Bay as a back drop. I later found out through another classmate that went on the tour that one of the ladies was there that day to get married to one of the prisoners. At that time, I thought that it was a crazy thing to do and how did she get to that point in her life where she could fall in love with a prisoner and get married on prison ground. After reading this book I can see how this could happen. However it seems as if asha is caught between loving a prisoner and wondering how did she get there and continue loving this person convicted of murder. Her opening sentence is a good example, “This is a love story like every love story I had always known, like no love story I could have imagined. It’s everything beautiful- bright colors, candles-scented rooms, orange silk, and lavender amethyst. It’s everything grotesque, disfigured. It’s long twisting wounds, open and unhealed, nerves pricked raw, exposed.” (p13). The sentence contradicts itself starting with something nice and ending with something not so nice.
I can relate to asha about being in an empty marriage and relationship. “It didn’t work because in the end, there were no words, no ongoing dialogues, no private jokes
between us. And for many people, the absence of language is not enough to end a marriage. But for me it was the primary reason to do it.” (p27). I was with my ex-
Melissa Cook p2
Prisoner’s wife part one
husband for a total of 7 years. For me the marriage was very comfortable, but I was not happy. I think I stayed with him for so long was because I felt safe, (which was a new feeling with me around men). That marriage ended after he betrayed my trust by cheating on me. I then realized that I needed more in a relationship.
I can also relate to asha when she talks about finding herself and exploring her history and hurt that goes along with it. “Why had I been so afraid for so long, so untrusting, so uncomfortable in my relationships? A book that I was reading at the time told me that in order to explore every part of myself, in order to seek answers and resolution, I would have to be in a place where I could feel nurtured, at home.” (p72). And she found this home with Rashid. I found this with my fiancée. I didn’t think that it would work out between us at first sight because he is a big man and looks very threatening. This scared me due to my history with my ex-step father, he beat my mother. I always shied away from larger men, well this time I didn’t. He is the kindest man that I have ever known; his heart is as big as he is.
In a way I admire the relationship that asha and Rashid form. To form something so beautiful out of a place so ugly and pasts full of violence and rape and drugs and murder, in a way gives me hope. If they can find love, let it grow and find happiness together than all of should be able to do just that too. We don’t have the walls of prison holding us back. I also admire her being able to hold onto that relationship while Rashid was in prison. I for one was so happy to be home after being on prison grounds for just 4 hours, it gave me a new found respect and sympathy for the people who have to live at San Quentin and call it home.
December 5, 2006 at 6:40 am
Jana Churich
The Prisoner’s Wife Response
Humanities 1395
“I am embarrassed to admit this but I know it has to be said. For the first time in my life, I was truly and completely proud to be Black.” (23) It is surprising to hear her say this for a couple of reasons. First and foremost I always assumed that a Black person identified themselves very strongly with being Black or African-American. Their race, in my assumption, was part of what defined them as a person. This is a strange concept because I do not define myself as white or Caucasian. When people ask me what nationality I am I say Italian. I was not born in Italy, I do not have family in Italy but I know part of my heritage and culture comes from the Italians. Secondly, when she said this I thought of Trouillot, and the Columbus story. The idea of silencing certain parts of history is more and more evident with every novel or lesson we read. In asha’s case the history of her heritage was taught through the civil rights movement and slavery. She obviously did not grasp her heritage from these lessons instead when she went to college and learned about certain Black heroes she finally appreciated the connection and was proud of it.
A line that asha said that interested me was, “I had destabilized my own life, and then had the audacity to want sympathy, a shoulder, a helping hand.” (27) I know so many people, especially women who do this to themselves. We tend to get so caught up in what we are supposed to do that we neglect what we want to do. We make ourselves crazy trying to make the perfect life, meet the perfect people and have the perfect jobs and kids that somehow or another we end up destroying those very things we tried to make perfect simply because they are too perfect. Most of the women I know go insane if their life is actually in order. We conjure up things to go wrong so that we can feel challenged or passionate. Some women I know start fights just so they can feel like there is a communication level between them and their significant other. When you fight with someone it takes energy and demands voice, debate, concern, and feelings. And then of course, when it is all said and done the reflection of what happened in the fight or divorce or whatever makes the person feel alone and in need of a shoulder to cry on. Many times they feel hopeless and have low self-esteem. She goes on in the next paragraph to say, “Where could I stay? Who could I love? What could I do? What goal could I meet?” (27) This is typical I think of the woman psyche. I personally do this all the time. Women get caught up in so many things being wrong that we bite off more than we can chew. Realistically asha had issues with her husband, which she essentially created into a destructive pattern of questioning who she was and where she belonged. It is a snowball effect.
The scene in the van that asha describes is really fascinating. She says, “ We were like an Easter Parade on crack.” (44) This aspect of her relationship seems like such a struggle. Even in asha’s tone it seems like she does not quite grasp why this is happening to her. She definitely embraces her love for Rashid there is no doubt that she is fully committed to dating him while he is in prison. It seems obvious how she would feel like she is being punished, that her current state is a repercussion of past wrong-doings. I personally could not imaging being on that bus with a bunch of women who were on their way to visit their husbands and boyfriends because it is so monotonous. It is wonderful
Jana Churich
The Prisoner’s Wife Response
Humanities 1395
that they share a connection through phone calls and letters but the physical and emotional aspects of a relationship that can only be accomplished person to person are negligent in this case. When she speaks about just simply wanting to hold his hand that is intense reality- she cannot be with him for many years. This would not be such a problem except that she craves that touch, the tenderness, and the excitement of having a man in her life. Take how she opens the letters he sends her. She practically goes on a date with herself seducing the idea that one day he will walk through the door and embrace her with his touch, not his words.
“I realized that Rashid was not outraged by what happened to me because searches were something he was nearly desensitized to; humiliation is the daily fabric worn to gray in the life he leads and the life I was choosing to live along with him.” (51) This has Foucault written all over it. The body and how it is used as a tool for punishment. The way we treat our prisoners and break down their mind body and spirit rather than actually attempting to fix their social issues and psychiatric needs. “There remains a trace of ‘torture’ in the modern mechanisms of criminal justice – a trace that has not been entirely overcome, but which is enveloped, increasingly, by the non-corporal nature of the penal system” ( Foucault 16) It is a humiliating thing to think about the displays and the nudity guests and prisoners have to go through. I am glad however, that asha understands in this quote that I gave that she is choosing to deal with it and that it is an inevitable part of the process. Those searches are part of her lifestyle now, and although in a perfect world they would be unnecessary not everyone in jail that has visitors is as good of a person as Rashid. Ultimately whether the searches are invasive and inappropriate or not, the guards and the penal system are protecting and ensuring the safety of people in the prison.
“There wouldn’t be so many people dead, and there wouldn’t be so many people here, if we could ever see it coming.” (59) asha asks Rashid a page and a half of questions about what happened when he got arrested. It feels like she enjoys the concern, that she appreciates his sensitivities but only because she knows it comes from a hardened man. I like to hear his accounts though. It is refreshing to hear from the prisoner’s point of view like in Dead Man Walking.
December 5, 2006 at 9:44 pm
does anyone know what the next assignment is? do we finish reading prisoner’s wife and do a two page response? what is the final project?
December 6, 2006 at 2:03 am
I know we are supposed to finish Prisoners Wife, and write a two page response.
I am not sure what the final project is, but I am sure we will find out.
December 6, 2006 at 2:38 am
she is working on what the final project will be right now. i spoke with her.
December 6, 2006 at 6:37 am
did you guys also do an additional two pages on always running? i did the paper then started the prisoner’s wife and i feel like i am missing something. any idea?
December 6, 2006 at 11:17 pm
I feel bad for Rashid in a way because he is stuck in prison and for a while asha was having her way with other men, i wonder if their relationship would be the same if Rashid had other women vistiing him. Should their be monogomy between the two??? Can one truely love two people the same way?
Jana- I think you are right when you say some women start fights just to feel the connection, i wish it wasn’t that way,but it is. I wonder if women are so unbalanced chemically because of birth control or other chemicals in our food? I just don’t know
December 7, 2006 at 5:58 am
Corrine – i completely agree with your point about wondering what rashid is like outside of the prison walls. i’m a very cynical person and i’m not very trusting. but in reading this book i actually come to like rashid for the person he is. it is easy to like him and to discount what he did to be put in prison in the first place. i think that is one of the goals in asha’s writing. while i don’t think her book is a plea to people to see rashid the way she sees him, i think she wants to share their connection with the world, to have the world see rashid the way she does. i truly believe that they have a better relationship than most married couples.
December 7, 2006 at 5:58 am
ryan – i had to respond to your comment about san quentin. while i didn’t go to san quention, i have been to a couple of maximum security prisons (not supermax – pelican bay style prisons) in illinois. i have also experienced the embarrassing prospect of stripsearch that asha experienced. i went with my older sister to visit her boyfriend in prison and the metal detector caught the underwire in my bra. i was given the options of taking it off, going into the bathroom to rip out the underwire, or being strip-searched. i chose the unspoken option and didn’t go past the metal detector. to me, the search is the hardest part of visiting someone in prison – being stripped bare and laid bare in front of a total stranger is not something i think i could do on a continual basis.
December 8, 2006 at 4:56 pm
Hi Donna:
I agree with you, “to me, the search is the hardest part of visiting someone in prison – being stripped bare and laid bare in front of a total stranger is not something i think i could do on a continual basis.”
Talk about vulnerable. I think that point would have stopped me from visiting.
December 8, 2006 at 4:57 pm
Somehow I was not surprized by all of the personal experiences that so many in our class have had. I appreciate people’s ability to share, it helps the subject matter become real.
December 9, 2006 at 12:12 am
Your welcome! Some people have told me before that I should be more private about my situation, but I have nothing to hide. It is my life and yes my husband was a convict but what matters to me now is that he has changed. And I am greatful that he made this change before my kids were born. I have a few friends that deal with the same problems that I use to and their children are affected too. It is sad!!
December 9, 2006 at 3:45 am
Ben Basque
Human 6 1395
A Prisoner’s Wife 1
A Prisoner’s Wife is asha bandele’s memoir of her journey into love and acceptance. asha falls in love with an inmate named Rashid who is imprisoned for killing someone. Rashid and asha eventually marry and have a daughter. As a young woman asha is unhappy and unfulfilled. She is in college and volunteers in a prison. While volunteering she meets and befriends Rashid. Rashid offered friendship and understanding to asha at a time when she was starving for those elements in her life. “I was 25, a poet full of secrets and sadness, an emerging women hampered by insecurities and anger, a human being fighting off loneliness…….needing an open love, long honest discussions.” (17) Rashid is a safe relationship because by being in prison it puts restrictions on the relationship and allowed it to grow at a slower pace without complicating it with a physical relationship. It also gives room for retreat if the relationship becomes to stressful or overwhelming.
asha’s first marriage fizzed and as that relationship was ending she met Rashid. In my opinion the timing was a perfect set up to fall in love. The friendship was safe and fulfilling and her marriage was not, it is easy for me to see how asha was attracted to Rashid given what she was feeling. In her marriage asha and her husband were just co- existing with no meaningful interactions. “While we had the administrative part of it down, we were missing the creative. It didn’t work because in the end, there was no end, there were no words, no on going dialogues, no private jokes.”(27) Part of the reason she may have had such and “administrative” marriage is because of all the secrets she had, both from her husband and herself. It seems to me if you are trying to function with secrets life could be pretty complicated and communication, sharing and intimacy would be risky to your secrets. They might slip out.
asha had a friendship with Rashid for two years before she moved on to being his girlfriend and wife. asha learned about true friendship and unconditional acceptance from Rashid.”…by the openness of his spirit it was I who would change. Back then, during those early days of friendship, I learned something about taking in different points of view, listening carefully, reserving judgment, and about not having to win an argument for winnings sake……I learned by watching Rashid, who always spoke deliberately, and who admitted being wrong if he’d been shown to be wrong.” (19) asha’s friends and family questioned her judgment in falling in love with a murderer, but that is not who she loved, she did not even know the man who committed the murder, she knew the new and improved version of that man. “I’ve explained to people that I didn’t, despite what it would seem fall in love with a killer, I fell in love with a man who wanted to become his own more perfect creation, a man committed to the transformation of himself, of the world.”(20) This passage reminds me of Tookie Willims, he too was a man committed to the transformation of himself. I wonder if incarceration leads people to this concept. After reading about Tookie Williams, Luis Rodriquez, and now Rashid they all come to this same place of transformation.
Ben Basque
Human 6 1395
A Prisoners Wife 1
Pg. 2
I really agree with asha’s statement “The world is so magnificent, the way it keeps rebirthing itself to you, if you are amenable.”(21) We are giving many chances in life to “recreate” ourselves or our circumstances if we chose to. This is what makes living such a great adventure. It is also what helps us to survive the harder times in our lives.
asha admits that she comes from a family that prefers to leave things unspoken. “I come from people who prefer silence, who believe that refusing to give a name to a thing will send it away. They have lived like this and they have survived.”(99) In some ways being married to an inmate lets you continue these silences. It seems to me that when your relationship is long distance and mostly monitored you can pick and choose what you share. You are intimate, but you are also lacking a certain intimacy that you can only get by continual close contact. Because you are not sharing a home or friendships and you have limited exposure to each other it seems like your relationship would stay less complicated and new, even over many years. I wonder how their relationship with each other will change when they finally live together as a family? Will it continue to be wonderful? Will they be able to whether the daily stress of living with each other and the compromises that will require? Right now they have had conflicts, but then they have time away from each other. When they finally live together there will not be that same room for retreat.
December 10, 2006 at 8:30 pm
i am posting the second prisoner’s wife assignment here…
Jana Churich
Humanities 1395
Prisoner’s Wife 2
“Love and insecurity are an ill-fated couple. Yet there they are, together all the time, rolling around in the bed, accusing and they assuaging, and then accusing each other again and again.” (117) I think this message is very true. So many times in relationships people, men and women, are burdened by their insecurities. When you add love to those insecurities it is as if one becomes even more insecure because the desire to be loved out weights the desire to feel repressed or insecure. People generally want to be loved. They want to find someone they feel comfortable with and attracted to so that the intimacy is natural not forced. However, in many cases fictional or real-life someone is always holding something back. There is something unsaid, or silent, that muddles around the love that seems to end up destroying it. To be in love their has to be confidence, trust, willingness to listen and learn and when we are overcome by the insecurities we feel, no matter how strong or how important they may be we end up tainting the love with anger, frustration, or self-destruction. When we go to the movies and watch a couple that we is as the audience knows is meant for each other we feel at ease, but as we watch each character’s insecurities take over them being honest and open with their loved one we watch the relationship self-destruct. It is a timeless and ongoing theme that happens everywhere. The irony of this is that asha really was insecure and in love all at once. She fell in love with Rashid and only after she fell in love with him did she start to understand her repressed emotions and truly pinpoint her insecurities. However, we get a very small glimpse into the affects this had on Rashid. We never really get the opportunity to know him. I think it is important to point out that asha has a very unique and specific experience and perception of Rashid. She is telling his story through metaphor, poetry, through the book, nonetheless obscuring what he may or may not been feeling at any given time during their marriage. In other words, I believe he was plagued by much insecurity and perhaps those insecurities did lead him into the relationship with asha. This is evident every time he asks her if she is going to leave him, and if she truly loves him. But we will never know.
“After everything I have seen, the story of prisons that I am able to write is the story of the intimidation and the fear that I live in every day of our life. “ (126)
asha goes on to talk about the injustices of the prison system. The uncomfortable strip searches and the fact that their visits are monitored so closely really puts a strain on asha and her experiences with Rashid. Every novel I read that gets closer and closer to the prisoner experience makes me wonder, not doubt, but wonder what good prisons really are. I feel like there is a sympathetic overtone- that we should feel bad for these men that are in prison. Somehow through the Prisoner’s Wife, Always Running, and Dead Man Walking I am feel a benevolence towards these prisoners and want them to be set free so they can go out into the world and make the impact that so willingly will make. I just find it hard to believe that we are so easily guided to feel this way, and so easily forget that these men, these prisoners, are killers and rapists. This is where the idea of rehabilitation comes in. First of all the process and procedures within the prisons are necessary measures to protect the safety and security of employees, visitors, and prisoners. They may not all be honest and fair but the reality of it is that the prisons are over crowded and necessary measure need to be taken. No the prisoners should not be victims to rape, abuse, or unfair measures of being set up or black mailed but it most definitely should not be a comfortable environment. On the other hand, the better we treat our prisoners the more likely they are to rehabilitate well and serve the community with purpose and fulfillment. I guess what causes me to struggle over this issue is the fact of the matter is that a man like Rashid who made a mistake, a big mistake, while he was younger gets sentenced twenty to life and after twenty years and obvious rehabilitation is still denied his appeal. What purpose does twenty to life offer? I think it is a power play by the justice system. Sentence them to this unreasonable amount of time, give them the opportunity to learn and grow, but then don’t reconsider their induction back into society because some judge twenty years ago thought twenty to life was a substantial punishment for the crime. There should be a better review process. There should be exceptions to the rules so that the correctional process really does promote the fixing of people rather than the destruction of them. There also needs to be a reminder to us, as students, and to society that it is important to punish people for crimes. When it comes down to it we do not want to live next door to a rapist, robber, murderer, or druggy. They should be punished for the crimes they commit, but my argument is that when they can demonstrate rehabilitation, renewed sense of values and behaviors then they should be given the opportunity for early parole. I feel like Rashid deserves the opportunity to be with his wife, I feel for him because of the case she posed for him, and I am a believer that he has made peace with himself, his crime, and the system that incarcerated him.
“I would tell them that most prisoners come back out into society, and in general, the ones who do not re offend are the ones who were able to get some schooling, learn some marketable skills, participate in alternatives to violence and in antidrug programs, and yes the ones ho were able to maintain family ties through regular and conjugal visits.” (163) The conjugal visit process I think is a great idea. I mean really the way asha put it as a privilege not a right is absolutely amazing. The prisoners should be allowed privileges for good behavior. And these privileges should have the same emphasis as the more intense punishments for men on bad behavior like solitary confinement, etc.
This novel tackles the abortion debate as well as the prison/prisoner themes. She documented her experience very profoundly and personally. It must have taken a lot for her as an author to express such intimate and controversial details of her life. There are a lot of underlying issues that go along with the chapters on abortion. First of all, she was about to have a child with a man who could never be a real father. The child would grow up with the understanding that its father is a felon and will never have quality time with them. Also, there are many children, including asha and Rashid, that were victims of unsettling childhoods. Could focusing on better parenting skills, safe sex, and child abuse ultimately help the country’s violence and incarceration rates? We have already discussed where most of the prisoners come from and how and why they get there and most of the time it is because of the way they were brought up. Poor or not poor, if they had no supervision, were beaten or unloved, or abused and abandoned they find ways out of their own lives by doing drugs, committing crimes, and taking their feelings out on other people through violence and rage. Perhaps those prisoners that are already in jail are helpless…perhaps our motivations need to be put into preventative measure for at risk youth. It’s just a thought, but out of all the classes required in compulsory education how come parenting, or parenting skills are not part of the curriculum?
December 10, 2006 at 9:32 pm
Jamie Danford
1395 Asha
12/10/06
djammyjam@yahoo.com
I find it interesting how opposites compliment each other so well in this love story. It is beyond me how such a beautiful relationship stems from one of the most horrifying places. It’s almost romantic, going against the odds in such a situation. Asha a poet, a free spirit, but a bottle of emotions and Rashid a murderer doing time, 20 years he has to think ahead about all of the things he can do right over and over perfecting his life in his eyes of what his future holds for him and what he is willing to make it, “a man who wanted to become his own more perfect creation, a man committed to the transformation of himself, of the world.” (Page 20) Asha needing wide open spaces to make big mistakes gosh I love that country song “Wide Open Spaces.”
Rashid and Asha met in prison. Asha an inmate counselor, so to speak, and Rashid the inmate. The roles of these two love birds become reversed. Rashid taps into her personal life which “had been bent, slapped around, shoved, and kicked aside by silence and lies” (84). This scares me because this type of background makes a woman ever so vulnerable. I know because I have had a similar one. Asha was also a prisoner, a prisoner of herself, having bottled up all of these experiences that she was never strong enough to share with anyone because of the fear of being judged. Rashid and Asha having so much in common, both married, unhappy, prisoners trapped in a life without true love.
Asha states that, “While we had the Administrative part of it down, we were missing the creative. It didn’t work because in the end, there was no end, there were no words, no ongoing dialogues, no private jokes.” (27) The American dream should never be called a dream it should be called the American fairy tale. A dream is full of unpredictable events, spontaneous and exciting, scary and satisfying. All of which do not define what the so called American dream is said to be, predictable, planned, organized and happy almost a list: The house, two cars, two kids, a dog in the backyard and a boat in the garage, and a Christmas tree with a star at the top. A dream is what ever you want it to be and that is exactly what Asha and Rashid are able to do with plenty of time to fantasize. Although there dream does not involve a plan, the only real plan they have is to be with each other when he gets out and go from there which will be something neither of them have done before. Will they be able to make their fantasies a reality?
When they dance in the visitors room it is as if nothing around them exists. When you find that special someone that is what it feels like. You see nothing but the love in their heart that that person holds for you because if you had to hold it yourself you would drop it with the risk of it being shattered. Love is scary because when this happens and that person gets your heart you don’t even realize when it happens. Reality becomes a dream for them in that moment, “in time, he would be again, a man, whole, in control of his environment and himself” (77) only with Asha will he be whole and only with Rashid will she be whole. Once he gets out there will be no more fantasizing, no more dreaming,
p.2
no more unknown, no more restraints, no more bars, no more fear of one kind only to fulfilled with another.
Asha realizes that with her new found strength that Rashid has helped her find, the strength that she had all along, but silenced for the sake of reputation and judgement,
“that in the end [she] would not be defined by [her] experiences. [She] would be defined by what [she] chose to do with [her] experiences” (98). Rashid in this instance has become her therapist sharing his experiences and coming to terms with his unforgivable acts so does Asha.
A relationship consists of connection, communication, trust, security, risks, disagreements, and no measurement, but most of all honesty. I questioned whether or not Asha should have come clean with her dating other men. What would Rashid, so madly inlove with Asha, be willing to do once he got out of prison in order to keep her for himself? Would he hesitate to murder again if he knew he would have to live without her anyway? Asha has entered herself in a very dangerous relationship, but I think that that is why it is intriguing to her. She likes dangerous situations, that is all she has ever known. Has Asha gotten so caught up in love that she has forgotten the about the risks involved or is she really willing to overlook his past and believe in his willingness to transform and allow true love to prevail? These are just a few of the things that went through my mind after reading Rashid saying “When you spent time with some other man. Did he, any of them deserve you? Did they deserve you, your energy and your time?” (111) I love that he never stops putting her on a peddle stool although it almost sounds as though he is assuming that she is something to be deserving, as if he deserves her and no one else does. Should other men who have not helped her healing process have to do something to deserve her? Or is spending time with her and keeping her from being lonely deserving enough? This disturbed me. I couldn’t help but think about these factors.
Another disturbing factor of the book was dealing with the pain that Asha had to go through during the searches in order visit Rashid and other prisoners. It is sick sad and unbareable that she felt violated and was able to shut of her feelings when being touched in her private areas. “It was a trick I had learned to do while having sex”(48). As if her feelings could be contained like a water bottle with one of those squirt bottle caps that you lift to open and push down to close. Why would a victim of sexual abuse put themselves through that? Bringing back all those memories every time she went to see the man of her dreams. Was that what made her so vulnerable to him? The needing and wanting his security and knowing that he would never violate her in such a way?
December 10, 2006 at 9:33 pm
Jana – “Love and insecurity are an ill-fated couple. Yet there they are, together all the time, rolling around in the bed, accusing and they assuaging, and then accusing each other again and again.” (117) I loved this quote
December 10, 2006 at 10:26 pm
Ryan McGraw
Prisoners Wife 2
I cannot imagine the feelings that must have come out of her soul as she set foot into the clinic. I remember a truck that used to drive around my high school campus that would have huge pictures of dead babies and such that were meant to scare and contest abortion. I only felt disgust, that someone would have the nerve to drive a truck around with something on it, but the only thing I could think of after reading this passage was, I understand. During this time as asha writes, I reread the whole section multiple times in hopes that I could get into my skin the feelings she had as she walked over the shiny tile floor. This is something I will never experience ever, so I really wanted to place myself inside of her as this happened, to truly get a sense of what women go through in such a life changing procedure.
As their love carried on through prison walls, stronger then ever asha starts to doubt feelings inside of her. She listens to people around her asking her what she is doing and why. She does not tell her parents or family that she has fallen in love with a man who committed murder and may never see the light of day or know what it feels like to lay in the grass at a public park. Public and freedom are not really in their vocabulary. Asha dreams night and ay about waking up one morning and Rashid being there above her, waiting to kiss her and tell her everything will be ok. Instead the closest she can get is him telling her that he will just “be home in a minute”. She is extremely controlled throughout these pages, as many times she feels the need to go into rage and tear her own flesh apart, but Rashid’s love, even though not physically present composes her. She fights the battle everyday with this issues, “…he will be outside one day, at my door…?” (146).
Her conscience is bombarded by her unconscious mind as questions of remorse and pain take over her days and nights. She has many times when taking her own life is the only way out. She is unemployed, works at a job that barely pays well enough to live, is close to getting a degree but yet so far away and has the only two things that keep her going day to day; love and faith. Her faith leads her to question things that happen between them in letters on the phone. They argue as many couples do, as well as have many doubts about the future, but love is always there as a backbone to support one another. She prays to ever God she knows how, that he will be home safe and that one of those Gods will bring her husband home to her.
I can almost feel the emptiness she feels as she wakes up every morning, waiting to board the bus. The sleepless nights of thinking about what life could have been if I hadn’t met this person. How much better would life be if there was no more pain? Yet how much worse life would be if you had no experience of love? It’s a drug, that you cant get enough of. As I read, I often wondered what would have happened if he had stopped loving her or something happened between them. There is talk of other men that asha had seen and been with, but never if she had just decided to not show up to the bus one day and never again return. Of the words she spoke I really cant even imagine how it would be possible for them not to be in love from the start, but thinking about how it would have been so easy to give up crossed my mind a few times. When you know you love, you feel it through and through. You wake up wondering if this is going to be the day that you give it you all and it falls through, much like her feeling of being down in the well. You pray the other person will stretch their arms and grab you from the unknown, but wonder how they will ever pull you out alive. You imagine life without that person, without love or passion or emotion but you cannot do it no matter how hard you try. You hear the other person call out “comeoncomeonecomeonecomeon” (204), wishing hoping you will just grab hold to the unknown and trust them as they pull you out of the well that consumes your heart and soul. Your full effort goes into the love you feel and you can only help it doesn’t burn. “…and this is when slipping begins, slipping from the burning…” (204) The pain is almost unbearable but you hold on, because love and faith are attached at the end of that “rope”. “Suddenly my hands do not burn. I become weightless as I am lifted out of the well.” (204) “I do not know what I did,” says the end of the “rope” (204). Deep down inside I think you truly know what happened. Opening up your heart and faith to the world of the unknown and not remembering and only concentrating on the future, where no one will drop you again, or let you go, gives you exactly what you need to be whole and true; Never to fall again.
Like the beginning of a lifetime, the final words that echo in my head are those of asha as she casually speaks to a nineteen-year-old girl whom is hopelessly in love with another inmate, “Have a great visit!” (210)
December 11, 2006 at 12:32 am
my 2nd asha paper…
Donna Blanchard
The Prisoner’s Wife, Part 2
December 10, 2006
moxiedonna@gmail.com
Human 6, Section 1395
It would be easy for asha to walk away from any kind of relationship with Rashid – there would be no way for him to run after her. She could refuse to take his calls, stop visiting him, and stop reading and writing letters. Get away from him before she gets in too deep, before their love consumes her wholly. Rashid sees an asha that she cannot see for herself. Where she sees only the flaws, the imperfections and inner scars, Rashid sees her intelligence, her beauty, her confidence. It is hard to be with a man who loves you so completely and embraces every flaw when every other man you have been with only pretends to love you, only pretends to embrace the insecurities and the flaws.
Asha tries to convince herself that Rashid only loves her because he has no other choice, no one else to choose to love. She tells him that when he is released and sees the beautiful women teeming the streets of New York that he will realize there is someone better, something better than her. Asha creates a blanket of insecurities around her, I believe as a way to protect herself from hurting too much when he is not there. If she can convince herself that her romance with Rashid is just a temporary thing, it won’t hurt as bad when she no longer has him. “If I never come back, maybe the pain will subside, the loneliness” (118). We can try to convince ourselves of something, of anything, if it means that we don’t have to face the things we fear the most.
In addition to dealing with relationship problems and growing pains that everyone faces, Rashid and asha have a different hurdle to overcome – the guards and the prison system. Their every visit is subject to scrutiny and their every phone call is monitored. They must act in certain manners and touch only in certain manners or face punishment from the guards. The guards have the power to falsely accuse; to revoke privileges, to make prisoners’ and their families’ lives miserable. Their families and asha’s friends judge – everyone judges. The phone company can wield its power to refuse to connect Rashid and asha even if her phone bill is paid. So many authority figures can do so many things to keep them apart, to stop the lines of communication and try to drive a wedge in between them. So the prisoners and their families learn to adjust, to make sacrifices. “What Rashid and I must do is master the art of being fluid” (123).
“Surrounded by noise, anger, violence, depression, and steel, wouldn’t you give your life over to a greater power?” (125). I’ve seen many different inmates turn to religion in their time of need and always found it to be somewhat hokey. It seemed that the inmates who converted the strongest, who professed their faith the loudest were always the ones who returned the soonest. No matter how many times they professed their faith in God, Buddha, Allah, Kali Ma, Ra, the Great Spirit, or any name given to the higher power; they always seemed to find their way back to the lifestyle they were most comfortable with. It made me cynical, made me believe in God a little bit less. But when I read this book, read about Rashid’s devotion to his religion and the way he tried to live his life, I
Donna Blanchard
The Prisoner’s Wife, Part 2
began to wonder if it can really be different, if someone can really convert themselves inside a steel cage given the motivation and the right tools. After all, if there is nothing else to do all day but sit and think and hope and pray – wouldn’t we all become philosophers in our own way? Wouldn’t we all want to find a way out of the walls that surrounded us, even if it was in our dreams or in our prayers? Shouldn’t everyone have the chance to escape, to become free?
After asha and Rashid get married, they have their first “trailer” visit. Asha brings her past with her – during her reckless years of unprotected sex she never became pregnant and therefore started to believe that she was unable to have children. But just two weeks after that first trailer, asha realizes that she is pregnant, that her love with Rashid overcame her past once again and proved something she thought was unthinkable. Asha decides to have an abortion but Rashid does not want her to. There are things Rashid and asha say to each other to try to convince the other they are right. The abortion seems to drive a wedge between them, something that the prison, the phone company, any authorities could do. Rashid wants the baby, wants asha to be the mother of his children – he has always wanted that and knows that he will always want that and will always want her. Asha can see only the damage, the abuses of her past. It’s hard to see the beauty in one thing when your vision is clouded by sorrow and anger and hurt. “I could only see and understand my own pain” (175).
It is this pivotal moment in their relationship when there was the biggest chance of them leaving, of asha turning away from Rashid and refusing to turn back around. Their arguments are stuffs that break relationships that cause people to turn away from each other forever, arguments of finality. She could have left, could have walked away and left Rashid to fall apart in his solitude. But asha doesn’t – she fights her way back from the inevitable depression that abortion brings and comes back. They use their love, their devotion to fight the pain and return the balance to the relationship. “We were completely at peace, and we remained that way, still and at peace, calm and resolved, without words, and without movement, and without tears, for a very, very, very long time” (189).
When Rashid loses his appeal, asha seems to fall apart from the finality of knowing that she must wait for him to come home and join her in the life she has created for them. The certainty that Rashid felt in knowing that he would be released had lifted them both up to a point that, once the bubble burst, there was nowhere for them to go but down. She tells Rashid that she feels herself slipping, that she is at the bottom of a well and Rashid is the only person who can save her, who can drag her back to aboveground.
It must become more difficult over time to travel in a van filled with women all trying to reach the same goal, all hoping for the same outcome. They want their man home with them; want to be able to wrap themselves around him for more than just a 44-hour trailer visit. There is such an air of hopeful neglect in the van that it must eventually crush even the brightest soul, dampen every spirit. I believe that asha is starting to feel the weight of
Donna Blanchard
The Prisoner’s Wife, Part 2
Rashid’s incarceration; it burdens her soul and makes her limbs weary. She no longer has the bright outlook on the future, no longer believes in things she once did. The heavy silence of each visit, of every time she must leave Rashid behind, weighs on her. It is like a taste on the tongue, something so sweet and bitter at the same time. Something so wonderful and foreign that you are afraid to lose it by opening your mouth. “I feel like we should have the right to honor silence. We should have the right to hold the last taste of our visits under our tongues” (210). Hold each word inside until the next visit, keep them locked inside so no one can snatch them away.
“Good-bye is meaningless between people who have loved each other with all the clarity and precision with which we have loved each other. I do not say good-bye, Rashid. I just say see you in a minute” (219). The minutes can be a month, a week, an hour, a day, a year, a decade – but there are always minutes, there will always be minutes. I believe Rashid and asha have a better relationship than people who are with each other every day. They know each other more completely, more honestly than most couples. It is a rare gift – being able to wrap yourself completely in another person yet maintain your own identity. The devotion is there on both ends of the candle – they burn equally and brightly for the other person. To be with a man for as long as asha has been with Rashid, to trust him and honor him completely – that is love. That is their love; something no one else has and no one can take from them.
December 11, 2006 at 1:41 am
THIS IS MY SECOND PAPER
Jade Dant
The Prisoner’s Wife
12/10/06
italianbooty143@yahoo.com
online 1395
Out of the whole book I think the second part of it was a lot more interesting, I don’t know if it was the detail or just passion. There are so many quotes that I love from this section, like words put together like a poem. Like this one, “I think the greatest gift that can be given to someone you love is to give them the gift to see themselves as you see them”(114). Wouldn’t we all love to know what everyone else sees and what everyone else can hear in our voice? Now if we saw ourselves as we truly are, would we even like ourselves? That is what I love about this story is how much Rashid loves asha for all her flaws, but could this love be due to prison confinement almost like a shallow Hal affect. Being in prison is not just about taking away one’s freedom, but everything about their life including love. Prison seems to cut off part of the soul, keeping it forever. Asha says, “When I go shopping now, I often buy clothes only if I think they will meet the dress code imposed on visitors by the prison”(121). I guess that is like being in private school, clothes are a form of expression to some and even that freedom is taken away. Imagine strolling through a department store with a list of do’s and don’ts of prisonwear. Asha points out that prison is about power play and when something is claimed it can lose value. For example when asha publicly became Rashid’s woman she lost her name and the interest of prisoners who loved her poetry. It seems like wherever asha would go the relationship would be judged, even in prison.
Guards use their power of visitation to control inmates, things will happen to them or others that they would like to stand up for but can’t. This is all do to fear, the fear of
Jade Dant
The Prisoner’s Wife
losing what left one has and that is just simple visits of loved ones. Would I stand up for the rights of others around me if it meant I couldn’t see my family, my life partner? I guess I don’t know and that pause hurts me in a way because I have always been an advocate for standing up for others. When in prison it changes everything as Rashid found out and even asha, it change the way life is perceived. Rashid says to asha, “The difference between you and me is that with every day that passes, you see a little bit of your life slip away…but every day that goes by for me is one day closer to having what I’ve always wanted”(131). For a prisoner every week that goes by or even a year is just time closer to being out, where as people who are free it is another damn day out of the week, like that saying, “same old shit, just a different day”. So religion seems to play a role in both asha’s and Rashid’s life, but it similar and different ways. I like when asha reads the Qur’an and it says the manner and circumstance under which a man may beat his wife. My eyes got wide, because my boyfriend is a Muslim and I hope that he doesn’t want me to convert to a religion that has that in their own holy book. I guess though all religions have their quarks and gods, and maybe that is not the real message just because it is written in a book my MAN it doesn’t mean it is true.
So as everyone knows asha and Rashid get married in the prison. Wow, a wedding in a prison that is enough for me to develop cold feet and running shoes under my brides dress. Now did they get married for all the right reasons or just out of loneliness and the desire to have trailer visits. When they do get married and have their first visit asha was so scared to be seen and goes into her sexual abuse. Asha said, “I began to resent that fact that, as a victim, I was expected to be weird, sad, and in need of
Jade Dant
The Prisoner’s Wife
therapy”(156). This is just one example of the many insecure ideas that come from people who have been sexually abused and the worst part they think it is their fault. It is just heartbreaking to see people so controlled by memories and traumas. Asha becomes pregnant and goes to have an abortion all alone. I would be really scared and being a pro-choice supporter I can’t say I wouldn’t do the same thing in her situation. Asha was careless though and didn’t even try to use protection, that is the problem with today’s youth, they are caught up in the emotions and don’t believe getting pregnant is possible if the guy pulls out. I am so lucky to be born in a state that doesn’t come down hard on abortion, where as some go down back alleys and use coat hangers. Then poor Rashid has a totally different opinion because he was supposed to be an abortion, just a mistake. I can’t imagine being told I was supposed to be an abortion.
One of my favorite quotes of The Prisoner’s Wife is when asha says, “Have I said what it sounds like when a heart breaks inside a prison? It doesn’t sound like a crash, and it doesn’t sound like a shatter. When a heart breaks inside a prison, if it sounds like anything at all, then it sounds like a scream that’s trapped in a building caught on fire”(199). It is just so, I don’t know one of those emotions that can’t be described with words. The love story comes to an end with asha waiting at least 15 more years for Rashid to come out of prison because he lost his early release plee. I guess you can’t really call it an end, because they stay married, but that final letter to Rashid was so full of emotion is dripped from every word. I know how if feels to dread a decision, with tears rolling down your cheeks shaking every letter you put down. My chest just tightens for the ending of the book.
December 11, 2006 at 2:53 am
Page 1 of 3
Todd Eastman
The Prisoner’s Wife (Part 2)
12/10/06
todd.eastman@comcast.net
HUMAN 6 American Cultures, Section 1395
Have you ever watched a movie that successfully keeps you engrossed, only to have it come to the end and you ask yourself, “That was it?” That is how I would have to describe “The Prisoner’s Wife.” Judging from the book’s copyright of 1999, it seems like there is much that she has left out. Did Rashid get out of prison or is he still in? Are they still together? Did they ever have children?
At both the beginning, and at the end, asha tells her readers that this is a love story. I disagree. I think this is a story of a woman’s history of sexual abuse, poor decisions, and self destruction. I found the story quite sad. She recognized that she would be exposing herself to significant risks and trials, yet naively chose to go on. Originally, I thought asha had the potential to gain the most from the relationship, but Rashid had the most to lose. Now I am no longer sure.
Asha’s world began spinning out of control very early in her life. Rashid provided her with the catalyst for her self-exploration so that she could eventually learn to love herself. Unfortunately, asha took it to the extreme and made Rashid the center of her entire universe. For Rashid, time had frozen for him as he looked forward to the day he would get out. Each day for him was one day closer to that day. He had a strong incentive to making the relationship work. But for asha, each day was a loss. Another day of grief and loneliness. I see several years, perhaps a lifetime, that asha has lost.
By making Rashid the center of her universe, she admittedly lost out on career opportunities, a normal social life, and other life options. Her obsession is reflected in what she writes. “…and though I got a fast horrible flash of what my life might have been like had Rashid never been born (p172)…” or “I am functional in life, but not passive about it. The only time I allow any emotion to roam freely is when I am with Rashid.” (p201) It is almost as if she believes that Rashid was the only person in the entire world that could possibly define or become a part of her life. That kind of dependence is dangerous.
Another thing I found odd was how often asha wrote about talking to her friends and family. She would share intimate details, then take offense when the people she was writing about disagreed with her or discouraged her. What’s the use of seeking answers when you think you already have them?
Page 2 of 3
Todd Eastman
The Prisoner’s Wife (Part 2)
On page 120, asha casually provides the only mention of her relationship with Rashid’s family. “I don’t know why you two just don’t cut this phone business down, Rashid’s father said to me the one time we were all together at the facility for a big prisoner-and-family picnic day.” Who does she mean when she says “we” in this quote? Apparently, asha and Rashid’s father had enough contact with each other that she felt comfortable telling him about the $500-800 phone bills. Frankly, I think spending that amount of money on phone calls is absurd. I am also skeptical when she claimed the phone company would block the collect calls, out of fear that she wouldn’t pay her bills, even though she always paid in full and on time. Phone companies are in business, and collect calls are the most profitable of all. I just don’t seem them cutting her off for no other reason.
Not until half way into the book and two years into their relationship, does Rashid’s religious beliefs become a topic. In most cases, religion, politics, and social issues are subjects that a couple would normally discuss early on. Yet religion turns out to be a very significant item of contention between them. To me, this would have been a huge warning sign. I have to wonder – how could a devout Muslim fall in love with a woman who was a promiscuous feminist, who preferred to wear “pretty dresses, mascara, lipstick, and eyeliner” during each of her visits? As a Muslim, how did he deal with asha’s criticisms of the Qur’an and Islam, particularly when she refused to embrace his religion? She did make a comment that I could definitely relate to, saying, “I think religion generally gets in the way of a good relationship with God.” I do have to give her credit for acknowledging the cause and benefits of Rashid’s conversion to Islam.
I found it interesting how asha almost always refers to the correctional officers as “the police” rather than just calling them guards. The police have nothing to do with how prisons are run. She complained about so many things in the prison system, yet seemed to have difficulty understanding the difference between prisoner “rights” versus prisoner “privileges.” She doesn’t understand that there is very little justice in our justice system.
Her biggest fear was the power that the Prison had over the prisoners. She felt that the Prison system had complete and ultimate power, which of course, it does. She was afraid that the slightest infraction, look, or comment could result in Rashid being injured, or set up and never being able to get out. But after her abortion, she writes about breaking several of the rules, no longer worrying about the repercussions. Why the change of heart?
Page 3 of 3
Todd Eastman
The Prisoner’s Wife (Part 2)
I was completely shocked when Rashid got her pregnant. She didn’t think she was capable of having babies, so she didn’t worry about using protection. What was she thinking? An even bigger risk for her was the possibility of contracting HIV or Hepatitis C. Does she know for certain, but not share with her readers, whether Rashid ever had any sexual contacts while in prison, either forcibly or voluntarily?
Being a man, I cannot even imagine the emotional anguish that results when a woman must make the decision to either have the baby or an abortion. My only comment is that I think having that abortion was one of the very few intelligent choices she had ever made.
I was very disappointed with her reaction to 19 year old Elisabeth, whose boyfriend Tony was recently sent to prison with a sentence of 25 years to life for murder. Thinking back to all of her emotions and experience, and being as articulate as she is, I think asha failed miserably in not saying anything to Elisabeth. Warnings about what it is like to be a Prisoner’s wife, an offer of friendship. At worst, she might have offended Elisabeth. At best, she might have saved another woman from dealing with the same pain and isolation she had experienced.
December 11, 2006 at 3:26 am
Dawn Rash
The Prisoner’s Wife-2
December 10, 2006
dawnkrash@hotmail.com
Humanities 6 online
“Regardless of what anyone else might believe, I know there are no simple answers, no one-line solutions to this question of prison love and its relationship to power, I say there are no simple answers to most things in life, though often I’ve tried hard to reduce them down, choose sides quickly, and then maintain my positions forever and ever.” (123) Despite the fact that asha and Rashid’s entire relationship accommodated the rules and regulations of the prison system, I think that love is the greatest of all power. It is in the strength of love that asha finds the ability to cope with the multitude of hardships that come in maintaining a relationship with a man in prison. The restrictions of time allowed together, how or if they are allowed to touch, the constant noise and presence of other people interfering in what should be private moments leads to a level of frustrating emotional madness that only the power of love could endure. I think that only a tremendous amount of love could somehow sustain one through endless nights of solitude and loneliness. I think that only the power of love could dull the effects of bars, guards and constant intrusion that prison reigned on their relationship.
The prison wasn’t the only source of isolation felt by asha. Although she had a good support system of friends and family, she never quite felt understood in her commitment to Rashid. She was not comfortable telling her own parents about her wedding. “You don’t want to lose your parents. You decide to tell them nothing. And there is a price to pay for that decision. It is your wedding day and you cannot remember ever feeling quite so lonely, quite so isolated.” (143) She also touches on this when discussing how woman away from prison don’t bring up Dawn Rash- PW
their spouses or tell people where they are going on weekends or even lie about the fact that they are married. “Family gatherings were everybody knows, but nobody says, which is the way it is in my family, and which is why at significant moments in my life, I began to feel like a huge part of myself didn’t really exist.” (211) How horrible it must be to departmentalize your life in little boxes. I say this as if I don’t understand, but unfortunately I do. Many, many years ago when I was16 years old, my boyfriend (the person that I thought that I would spend the rest of my life with at the time) was incarcerated for shooting a sexual predator in the neck. Our lives had been intertwined since were only thirteen years old. Although I was not able to make the kind of commitment that asha did, the circumstances were different on every level, reading her words brought back many memories and that feeling of isolation is the strongest. My family wanted to just sweep the situation under the rug. I think that they felt if they were silent, my reality would not exist. One of the hardest parts of all of this for me was to reconcile the person who I so loved was the same person capable of shooting another human being and not being able to talk to anybody. I honestly don’t think that I ever did. I remember going to one of the hearings and accidentally running into his victim in the hall with his attorney. The man was showing the attorney the bullet scar in his neck. My blood ran cold because at that point I really knew none of the circumstances behind the shooting. Being a minor, I was left out of the loop and unable to talk with my boyfriend. I knew what was said to have happened, but I did not know what actually happened. Anyway, this whole set of circumstances was in one box, and the rest of my life was in another. Never did the two combine. Undescribable emotion.
Between the loss her baby and the loss of Rashid’s appeal, one could see that asha would Dawn Rash-PW
be due for some sort of breakdown. She knew better than to get her hopes up on the appeal, but her faith in Rashid got the better of her. Both situations brought the hard reality that her life was not going change with Rashid. Prison would continue to determine her daily patterns and Rashid was not coming home. I think that the ability to entertain the slightest shred of hope in having Rashid beside her one day was more in her subconscious mind than she knew. Rashid fed that hope in letters. She realized that she wanted Rashid to come home more than she wanted to write.(212) This realization brings asha to a place of blessing and appreciation for their love. “There may have been another story to tell, for Rashid and for me.” “But the story we have written, the one which is bigger and more defining than all the other stories, was the one which would begin with the words. This is a love story.” (214)
Despite the fact that asha chose separation for a short time, it is clear that they found their way back to each other and had the daughter that asha so wanted on Rashid’s web site. It was nice to put faces with the story. I don’t know what will happen with his parole hearing next month, nor am I sure of what is right. A huge part of me looks at the age of Rashid when the crime was committed and combines that with the tremendous amount of personal growth he has made in prison and I can visualize a success story. Another part of me wonders how the family of the victim feels. What do they say about Rashid being released? How would I feel if I were in their shoes?
December 11, 2006 at 3:52 am
Todd, asha and rashid have a 4 year old daughter. Check out his website though our schedule. It is kind of nice to have a face and his side of the story.
Ryan, I liked the way that you tried so hard to put yourself in a woman’s place. I also was halted by asha telling Elisabeth to have a nice visit. I don’t believe that there was anything that she could have said in a warning that would have made a difference. Twenty four years ago I was in a health club soaking in a hot tub with 4 exwifes of police officers. I was 2 months away from becoming the wife of a CHP officer.They started going on and on about the extra cirrucular activites that go on with that job. Finally one woman told the rest of them to back off, that I might be the exception to the rule. ( I wasn’t.)I did not take their advice and run like hell. I’m glad that I didn’t. It doesn’t matter that they were right, I would not have traded the good that came of that marrige because of the horrendous outcome. I also found out that they were wrong because I saw with my own eyes that some marriges within law inforcement are very successful.
December 11, 2006 at 4:19 am
Ben Basque
Human 6 1395
Prisoner’s Wife 2
asha seems to me to be a fragile person, one who needs to be valued by a man before she can value herself. “the loneliness, I mean, I take myself on lunch dates….but the distance between what they offer and what I need is a Grand Canyon. What ever I lurch towards in an effort to escape the loneliness always winds up having a huge hole in the middle. It’s a hole only Rashid’s physical and emotional presence can fill.” (168) By being involved with Rashid who is incarcerated she can have that love without the daily encumbrances. She is able to keep her secrets and share only what she chooses to share. Yes, she says that she has shared more with Rashid than anyone else, but she is still always monitored and on limited time when they are together. Even in the trailer Rashid must go to roll call seven or eight times during their time together. “Prison toys with time, teases its meaning, confuses those of us trapped and defined by the fourth dimension. During visits and phone calls, minutes and hours disappear…..what ever else may need to be said must be postponed, put on the back burner, minimized or forgotten.” (129)
Rashid seems to help asha to grow and face some of her demons, but ultimately at the end of the day she is still alone. He can be there in spirit or thought, but even then he can only share with her what she chooses to share with him. They do not have friends in common; they do not have family contact. It is just the two of them. There are no checks and balances in the relationship on either side.
Rashid proclaims his love for asha, but is it love or is it need? Does he have other relationships to compare to or fill the need for human companionship? Does he have other opportunities to develop other relationships? It does not appear to me that Rashid sees asha as a whole person. When a few weeks after asha terminates her pregnancy, Rashid says “welcome back….you haven’t been yourself since this whole thing, but I noticed the last two times on the phone and this morning even, you’re back to being my asha. Smiling asha, silly asha, laughing and sweet asha.” (187) The abortion was the first real life event that they experienced together that was not related to incarceration. If to Rashid the only real asha is smiling, silly laughing and sweet , he is missing a whole other dimension to her, because each of us is more than laughter, smiles and sweetness.
Ben Basque
Human 6 1395
Prisoners wife 2
Pg 2
When Rashid loses his court appeal, asha starts to feel that “the usual sense of excitement I felt because I was about to see my husband had been replaced by exhaustion and frustration.” (206) This happens in many relationships and that is when you have to work at the relationships to help it to grow and stay alive. I see this as the settling in time, in fact asha told us about this very thing happening in her first marriage when it became “administrative”. I am impressed that this time instead of abandoning the relationship as she did the first time around, she stuck it out and worked on making it good.
I wonder if one of the catalysts for her to write this love story was to prove to herself and her family that she was not ashamed of being married to Rashid? Asha says “the stories get whispered by the women who are silent about husbands and lovers at family gatherings, family gatherings where everybody knows, but nobody says, which is the way it is in my family, and which is why at significant moments in my life, I began to feel like a huge part of myself didn’t really exist…….Rashid has been secreted away as though I was ashamed of him.” (211)
December 11, 2006 at 4:23 am
Jana-
Wow, your statement about “I just find it hard to believe that we are so easily guided to feel this way, and so easily forget that these men, these prisoners are killers and rapist.”really articulates how Iv’e been feeling, but been unable to put into words. I read these stories and I fall completely for the inmate, and your right I don’t see the criminal. It is probablty where asha got caught.
December 11, 2006 at 4:30 am
Page 1 of 2
Crystal Pardo
December 9, 2006
The Prisoner’s Wife – Part 2
American Cultures 1395
Pardofam4@sbcglobal.net
In the second and final part of The Prisoner’s Wife, asha confesses to Rashid her fear and confusion that she has had about their relationship since they first became a couple. She remembers all of what friends and other people have told her about being involved with a prisoner, but their thoughts and opinions were a stereotype of all prisoners. asha sees Rashid differently. She has gotten to know him as a person, not just as a prisoner. Despite her strong love for Rashid, she admits that something inside of her hoped Rashid would decide that she was not worth it and he would leave her. (Page 118)
asha’s entire life has changed since becoming Rashid’s woman. She is looked at differently, arranging her daily life so that she can be home to receive Rashid’s phone calls, shopping only for clothes that meet the dress code of the prison, taking lesser paying jobs just so she can have the flexibility to take time off to visit Rashid and missing important events because they may conflict with her scheduled day to visit Rashid.
Although there are many negative thoughts about their relationship, I see this couple as having a very strong relationship because they took the time to get to know each other before jumping into a relationship like most people these days have done. Not having sex right away is also a big part of what keeps their relationship strong. A lot of relationships are based primarily on sex because that may be the only thing a couple has in common or the only thing they can enjoy with each other. Too many people have sex on the first date and that may be a reason to keep in contact with that person. This is the opposite for asha and Rashid, they had to wait a long time before they could be sexual, and therefore when the time finally came they were able to appreciate it and have more love toward each other.
After they married, Rashid applied for conjugal visits and soon asha was spending a few days with him rather than a few hours. Visiting with each other in that trailer was much different than seeing each other for a few hours. The daily visits were monitored more and with limited physical contact, but in the conjugal visit asha and Rashid were able to be passionate for their first time. Two weeks after the first visit asha found out she was pregnant. She did not think that she could ever get pregnant because she was married before and had slept with other people as a teenager and never got pregnant. She even told Rashid that she thought she could not get pregnant, but here she was pregnant and alone with a decision to make.
Page 2 of 2
Crystal Pardo
The Prisoner’s Wife – Part 2
American Cultures 1395
She spoke to Rashid about her situation and decided to have an abortion. Rashid did not want her to get rid of the baby, but asha argued that he would not be around to raise his child just like he was not there to raise the son he already had. asha knew that financially she could not afford a child and she wanted to be a mother when the time was right which was not now. The argument continued about asha’s decision, but in the end Rashid told her that she had won so asha made an appointment at a clinic. She did not feel that she had won anything, but rather that she was about to lose everything. (Page 173)
Rashid had tried to appeal his sentence, but learns that he lost his appeal. At a visit in July Rashid tells asha that he lost his appeal. All asha can think about is what the next seven years will look like for her locked down, locked away. (Page 201) asha begins to feel as if she is slipping.
Despite all of their set backs and the years that are still in front of them, asha and Rashid seem strong enough to make it through to the end. It has already been many years that they have survived their separation and it may be many more before they can be together, but their love is strong and secure to make it. asha who has committed her life to being the prisoner’s wife is much harder than be the husband behind bars. My husband once told me that while being locked up (incarcerated) and having a girlfriend or wife out of his world is the hardest thing to do while serving his time. He said that all he could do is stress about me and how I am making it out here without him to be there for me. I found it hard to believe because my struggle was harder even though I was not behind bars. I can not say I was free because I felt as if I served that time with him, but in the end it was worth it. Although our time was only two years and asha and Rashid’s is much more than that, I feel as if they will make it in the end.
Asha writes Rashid a letter in the end, a letter for him to refer to so he knows just how much she really cares for him. He should be lucky to have a woman like her because being a prisoner’s wife is a hard thing. He should always remember and never take for granted the life that she has devoted to him. I can say this because I have been there and know how she feels waiting for him to come home to her one day.
December 11, 2006 at 4:31 am
Dawn, thanks for the info. It is nice to see who we are reading about.
December 11, 2006 at 5:06 am
Corinne Neuman
Prisoners Wife, Part II
Humanities 6: Section 1395
December 10, 2006
Asha is an incredible writer, whose talents are able to journal the thoughts and feelings of the romance at the time. The story of this love was incredibly inspiring, bringing me back to a place where a desire for true love prevailed. I could feel myself dancing through the feelings of hope, desperation, love, and loneliness.
I can only imagine what asha felt on the day of her wedding. A day that our society has little girls looking forward to from the day they are three, asha is left standing at a sidewalk looking for her bus. Asha was read statement after statement of what she was getting herself into, but love prevailed. I am boggled at what kept her going? What kept her drive to feed into this romance that only existed through prison walls, phone calls and words? I suppose that Rahshid is what fueled this fire, and continued her drive.
Then there is Rahshid, how sad he must have felt to leave his bride in tears. In our society so much emphasis is placed on sex on the wedding night. Most people anticipate, and plan this night for a lot of their life. This was not the emphasis of Rahshid and asha, and I cannot imagine much more of an ego blow to Rahshid. “It is your wedding day and you cannot remember ever feeling quite so lonely, quite so isolated.” (143) Afterall, what kind of omen is left to a man to not only leave his wife with no sex on their wedding night – but also to leave her in tears. I can imagine that leaving on those terms would be harder on Rahshid, then it would be on Asha. Asha could go home, and find a way to calm her nerves and feelings. Rahshid is left not knowing when she was able, if she was able to comfort herself. That seems to me to be an incredible amount of guilt for some man to consume, the feeling of feeling responsible for her pain – and not knowing how and if she was able to be comforted.
Rahsid is the type of person that I truly believe to be most beneficial to our society. He is the “type” of person who has been down the “wrong” path and come back again. Rahsid is in a unique position since he has been there, and understands the choices that people are placed in. He can truly understand what it is like to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, with the wrong friends. However, does that really make a difference to someone who is about to head down that wrong path? Personally, sometimes I just start heading down a wrong direction and know one can change my mind. Even when I know where that path takes me, and that it is wrong something in me continues to drive me forward. It may be nice to have someone to talk to, who can understand and offer love and friendship. Ultimately though, when a person has made a decision – he’s made a decision.
I laughed out loud, when the night before asha’s big night at the trailer, she realizes that he has never seen her naked. I laughed because I could picture myself in that same position, all of a sudden realizing that I had not shaved my legs or other misc. stuff.
Corinne Neuman
Prisoners Wife, Part II
Page 2
Rahshid and asha had developed such a friendship, had gotten to know each other on such an intimate level that asha hadn’t even considered this part of the relationship. In some sense, I think she forgot that it existed.
The nights in the trailer, offered Rahshid and asha to build on another part of their relationship that had never been approached. Intimacy. Every relationship depends on intimacy, yet there relationship had never even approached the subject. How fearful I would have been about sexual compatibility? I would have worried that after all this relationship building, they were not able to be intimate. Can you imagine how disappointing that could have been? I would have been fearful. I was happy to see that the two were so compatible sexually as they were compassionately. The trailer program I thought was useful, as it allowed a couple to maintain that intimacy of a relationship. Without it, it would be difficult to remember why marriage was happiness. It is also incredibly important for the women to continue to feel connected with their husbands. Does San Quentin have this type of program?
I believe that I was surprised as asha was when she found out she was pregnant. Within the first sentence, of “I wasn’t feeling well,” that I knew that she was. I understood her decision to have the abortion, but was disappointed at the same time. My concern was that prison rape was never mentioned throughout the book, and it seems that asha didn’t really know how clean her new partner was before she engaged in the night she had forever dreamed about. Then again, with the amount of care and compassion that Rahshid showed for asha, I hope he would have been upfront.
Rahshid’s website shows a picture of a four year old daughter, where did she come from? I had thought that the end of asha’s book was telling us that she decided not to visit Rahshid anymore, and that it became too difficult? I had interpreted her to be saying that she decided not to see him anymore until his release.
I also felt it was interesting that Rahshid’s family was not really mentioned, while asha described how she felt with her own. How come they did not come visit him? Did asha develop a relationship with them outside of the prison walls?
I began to respect asha through the book, and felt that we really were with her through her transformation of seeking the meaning of life to finding meaning. I enjoyed the moment of the book when she remembered looking at the women that road the “bus,” and how she now finds herself on it.
I do not believe that asha is the typical women who fall in love with prisoners. For some reason, I have a different impression of these “types” of women. Instead, I see women who are desperate, who are seeking attention, and attracted to criminals. However, asha
Corinne Neuman
Prisoners Wife, Part II
Page 3
really opened up and exposed her biggest vulnerability to us. She has more guts than most of us could ever hope to have.
Overall, I enjoyed this book. Once I started it, I literally couldn’t put it down and I was truly inspired by asha’s ability to seek true love.
December 11, 2006 at 6:21 am
Here is my second Prisoner’s wife
Jereme Robinson Page 1
Prisoner’s Wife Part II
December 10th, 2006
Preludekid212@aol.com
Human 6 – section 1395
In the last part of Prisoner’s Wide asha begins to talk about the escalating problems in her relationship with Rashid. She goes into depth about trust between them because she feels that if Rashid wasn’t in prison that they wouldn’t be together. This is part of the reason why she feels the need to date other men. She wanted to date other men that chose her “from a sea of women” (115) She also has trouble with the amount of time that they actually get to spend together since he is always being watched and never allowed really just one on one time with no interruptions. Asha does get to spend time with Rashid but doesn’t like how it is always monitored. Even in the trailer Rashid must go to roll call seven or eight times during their time together. On page 129 Rashid describes what it is like for him with all the interruptions in there time together, “Prison toys with time, teases its meaning, confuses those of us trapped and defined by the fourth dimension. During visits and phone calls, minutes and hours disappear…..what ever else may need to be said must be postponed, put on the back burner, minimized or forgotten.”
Rashid talks a lot in depth to the fact that asha is the love of his life and how much he is love with her because sometimes you kind of wonder if it is truly love that he feels or the fact that there is someone there to take care of him while he is in prison. I believe it is mixture of both. Rashid does love asha because she makes he feel secure and happy but always likes her for the company that she brings to him in the trailer and in the prison. A couple or weeks after asha decided to not continue with her pregncy she returned to Rashid in a different mood. Rashid says, “welcome back….you haven’t been yourself
Jereme Robinson Page 2
Prisoner’s Wife Part II
since this whole thing, but I noticed the last two times on the phone and this morning even, you’re back to being my asha. Smiling asha, silly asha, laughing and sweet asha.” (187)
Rashid appeal was denied, which did not help there relationship at all. I felt like she was kind of hanging around wait for the decision about the appeal before truly making the decision about there relationship. Once asha found out that his appeal was denied I think she realized that she just couldn’t wait for him to join her life and family that she had planned for him. She no longer has the bright outlook on the future, no longer believes in things she once did. Asha then goes into a silenced behavior where she talks about how she just wants to keep everything inside and keep it between the two of them. It is said to see this process beginning to happen but I do understand where asha is coming from since she goes want to start her life and a family but has to wait for a man that is in prison for murder to be free.
At the end of the book on page 219 asha said something to Rashid that really touched me and showed that at this point in her life she couldn’t say good bye to him but said I will be waiting for you when you get out. “Good-bye is meaningless between people who have loved each other with all the clarity and precision with which we have loved each other. I do not say good-bye, Rashid. I just say see you in a minute” (219) The story ends with this note that asha will wait for Rashid another 15 more years to get out of prison but will not visit him as much as she does now. I like this end because it shows the dedication and love that these two had for each other. After looking at the website and Rashid and asha I saw a picture of asha baby and figured that in real life asha and Rashid had a baby together and that made me happy.
December 11, 2006 at 6:25 am
Kimberly Murphy
Human 6
Prisoner’s Wife 2
Page 1
The last half of The Prisoner’s Wife was very emotionally charged and asha opened up her heart and bared it all, the good and the bad. asha bared her soul so openly and her emotions intrigued me so much that I could not out the book down until I finished it.
“I think the greatest gift that can be given to someone you love is to give them the gift to see themselves as you see them,” (114). Rashid and asha both share this bond of showing each other who the other one really is. Rashid thinks of himself as a murderer and a convict, but asha shows him that he is so much more. She makes him believe he is worthy of her love and her devotion to him. asha thinks of herself as fat and a woman who men do not love. Rashid loves her so much that he forces her to see beyond her preconceived notions about herself and see that she is beautiful, and that any man would be a fool not to love her. Rashid made asha feel like she was beautiful and he even made he believe it. He pushed her to her limits and made her look at herself in the mirror and realize that she is beautiful no matter what she used to think.
They give each other a support system that they cannot find anywhere else. They are forced because of the prison walls to talk to one another, and confide in one another instead of just being physical with one another. They are forced to have a friendship, and to become the best of friends, before they are allowed to move onto the physical aspects of their relationship. “Of course it didn’t hurt, all those years when Rashid and I did not have trailers, when we were forced to actually communicate on those six-hour visiting room dates. We were forced to become friends, best friends, before becoming lovers,” (157).
The relationship that asha and Rashid had before they were married was one that most married people today do not have. Most people today rush into weddings and don’t take the time to get to know their partners, and therefore their marriages end in divorce. As a member of the Catholic Church, I myself do not believe in divorces. I believe that when you take vows you take them for life, not matter what life throws your way. People are so quick to file for divorce now a days that younger generations do not have much to look up to in the area of marriage. When I was in my high school years all of my friends had divorced parents, I was the only one who had parents still married, and for 21 years. Even though asha and Rashid met and married under the worst of circumstances, it has not seemed to whither their love for each other. In the book asha states that they have a lot of fights, but so what, they work through them. She always goes back to him, she doesn’t have to, he is in jail, if she decided to never see him again she could do that and there is nothing he could do about it. But she doesn’t, she always goes back no matter what they are going through, because they share a bond of love so strong that nobody, not even the state penitentiary can break it. If a man and a woman can survive marriage while one of them is in prison, why cant people on the outside world survive marriage?
In the book asha goes into great detail about her first pregnancy, her feelings and her decision to abort her child. When I was reading the book before she had the abortion I believed that she was going to keep the baby. There were things that she said and did that
Kimberly Murphy
Human 6
Prisoner’s Wife 2
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led me to believe that she really wanted to have this baby and be the mother of Rashid’s children. “Soon after the rape comment I left the restaurant, and when I did I massaged the place on my belly where I thought my baby was. I massaged it with more passion than I ever had before…I loved my baby. This is what I am trying to say,” (171). Rashid and asha went back and forth on whether or not to have the baby. Rashid wanted the baby and asha did not, she did not believe she could take care of a child and did not believe that she would be a good mother to a child. “I called a clinic and scheduled an appointment, and as soon as I did I knew only one thing was true: that I was a winner of nothing. I was, in fact, feeling more like I was about to lose everything,” (173). This statement she made right here made me wonder that if she felt like she was going to lose everything then why did she do it? There are many single women out there who take care of children. It’s not like she was incapable, she wasn’t in poverty, she had a loving family, a loving husband who also happened to be the father of the baby, and she wasn’t tied down to anything. In my opinion she should have had the child. When asha went to the clinic to get the abortion the counselor asked her whether or not she was aware that she had other choices than abortion, including adoption or foster care. She responded “They’re not options for me,” (181). I could not believe that she had said that. I would believe it if the woman had been raped but this was a women who had a loving husband, who even though he was in jail would do everything he could to take care of his child. He proved this to asha by taking care of his son from a previous girlfriend. I think that she was just being selfish in not having the child. She did not want to be a single mother so she decided to abort her baby. Her abortion and her being so open about it in the book really got to me. I do not believe in abortion and to read about a woman who willingly killed her child when she had no need to, when she was perfectly capable of taking care of it herself really fired me up. As I am sure you can tell.
Then she turns around and tells Rashid, “I cant wait to one day have your baby, if I ever get pregnant again, even if it’s before you come home, I’m going to have your baby,” (189). What was wrong with the first baby she was carrying of his? I really just do not get it. I guess I can’t judge her because I was not in her shoes, but it’s really hard not to judge someone when they had something, decided to give it up and then decided they wanted another one. Luckily for her and Rashid they did have another child together who asha is raising while Rashid is in prison.
Besides the whole abortion debacle, I thought that asha and Rashid’s love story was inspiring. It inspired me to hold onto my love and no matter what obstacles come our way and how many petty fights we have, that we can overcome them. “The only thing I could think to say, the only thing I thought I needed to say, was that this is a love story. That’s what I wrote; all down one page and then down another. This is a love story. This is a love story,” (214). The story that asha wrote is a love story. With all of its ups and downs and fights and tears it is a true love story. Rashid and asha went through hell and back to be together and they certainly haven’t got their story book ending. Rashid is still
Kimberly Murphy
Human 6
Prisoner’s Wife 2
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in prison awaiting his parole board hearing and asha is a single mother raising their daughter. Maybe someday they will have their storybook ending.
December 11, 2006 at 6:58 am
Melissa Duffield
The Prisoner’s Wife II
meld731@yahoo.com
Human 1395
12/10/06 1
The last part of The Prisoner’s Wife is I feel quite different from the first part of the book. Asha changes a few of her views on Rashid and their relationship. In the part of the book Asha describes how wonderful and open her relationship is. Asha also talks about how she feels she can be herself when she is around Rashid. However as we enter into the last part of the book some of the difficulties start to pop up in their relationship. Their relationship faces all the same obstacles many relationships face however they have the added pressure of prison and dealing with other people controlling the way they interact with each other. Asha talks about her insecurities as well as the insecurities that Rashid may have. She feels that Rashid may only “be with her” because he is in prison and if he were a free man he would not be interested in her at all.
I really appreciated how Asha opened up to talk about her insecurities with her physical, emotional, and mentally state. Many women, including myself face these problems daily and I feel that there are not enough people to turn to and talk to them about them. It is nice to know that another women questions why a man might love her. Although I feel that Rashid truly loves and cares for Asha, I really love how Asha was willing to open up and talk about she does not fell “worthy” enough for Rashid. When Asha’s friend talked about how Rashid has his own insecurities too, I think changed Asha point of view on their relationship. I
Melissa Duffield
The Prisoner’s Wife Part II 2
Think that before her friends comment Asha concentrated on her part in the relationship too much and did not think about how Rashid may feel. Since, I feel Rashid truly love Asha one must imagine how he must feel. To only see “his women” every now and then. Rashid has no idea most of the time where or what Asha is doing and who she is with. This might have been the main reason why Rashid made such a fuss about how Asha dressed, he did not want other men looking at her when he had no idea where she was and he could not be protective of her.
A main advantage that Asha and Rashid had in their relationship was communication. Rashid and Asha had to communicate and become friend even best friends before they could be intimate with each other. In this day and age many “relationships” are based too much on the physically part and not enough on true communication between the couple. Rashid and Asha knew a lot about each other: their liked, dislikes, fears, dreams, goals and much more. I can just image how hard it must be on both of them to have a relationship while Rashid is in prison but in a way I am jealous of their relationship. They had to know each other and I feel that they both truly trusted each other before there was an expectation for the physically part of the relationship. I feel that this is the main aspect, trust missing in most of the relationships today. The pressure that Asha must have felt after finding out she was pregnant was probably overwhelming. On one hand she has been given this gift a second chance top have a baby with the man she loves. On the other hand she is truly alone on raising the baby. The father would not be able to help and at the time she had no steady job and was unemployed. I feel that she made the right decision regardless of what Rashid may have felt I was though very happy after visiting the website to see that they had had a baby.
December 11, 2006 at 8:12 am
Dave Bynum
Human 6
American Cultures 1395
12/10/06
medic811@sbcglobal.net
Prisoner’s Wife 2
Being on the outside, Asha “had all the power in every part of [their] relationship” (120), yet at the same time, she was not “strong enough to leave” (118) because she was a woman in love. Relationships are complicated no matter what the situation. Some couples have long distant relationships; others are broken families trying to salvage family unity. Every situation is different. Asha and Rashid’s relationship was exceptionally difficult.
Asha sympathizes with Rashid’s situation because she feels captive as well. Although she can physically roam around free, her “heart is always right there, trapped in that prison” (121) disabling her from leading life as we know it.
In today’s relationships, religion is troublesome factor. A catholic cannot marry someone of a different religion unless he/she converts. Asha and Rashid had a similar experience. Although Rashid was a committed Muslim, Asha felt “the religion was too severe” (135) for her. Rashid believe “his religion saved his life” (135). Prison is a dismal place and it isn’t uncommon for prisoners to reach for some sort of greater power or answer. Religion can also by hypocritical. Asha observed another Muslim couple that “dressed” the part yet acted inappropriately by having public sex. Eventually their religion disagreement is unresolved and Rashid “liberates [her] thoughts and ideas, all of who [she] is” (138).
Finally after many years, Asha and Rashid decide to get married, while he is in prison. Asha conforms to all the dos and don’t rules and proceeds to the prison. Like any new bride, she is full of hesitation, uncertainly and carries a great deal of tension; however, she didn’t have any family pictures, no cake, no reception and no music, just her own memories.
Dave Bynum
The Prisoner’s Wife 2
A big part of their relationship had medicinal powers for Asha’s mental health. She worked out an abusive past, suicidal tendencies and self acceptance with Rashid. True love is about being vulnerable to your partner. Asha began to gain power and “felt powerful seeing [herself] as the victim” (156) instead of being the victim; “the victim even gave [her] an identity” (157). She learned that being the victim was a “safe time” (157) but the victim could not allow her to live, love her husband and write her books.
Asha was an advocate for extra curricular prison activities. Those “who do not re-offend are the ones who were able to get some schooling, learn some marketable skills, participate in alternatives to violence and in anti-drug programs, and yes the ones who were able to maintain family ties” (163). The object here is not to segregate prisoners but to reeducate them and benefit society. To acknowledge he/her crime, accept responsibility, identify the faults and correct them.
Dave Bynum
The Prisoner’s Wife 2
Loneliness was a big factor in Asha’s life. Each night she went home alone and struggled with her loneliness. She does not live the average life, she does not “live in the today of [her] life, but in a yesterday which never way, and a tomorrow which may never be” (167). Asha and Rashid don’t have a past and the future is unknown in a way which we are not familiar with. What haunts Asha is not knowing if they will ever be able to make memories (167). Asha altered her expectations and “allowed phone-call fantasies to replace an evening on the town” (192).
Asha is allowed conjugal visits and gets pregnant. She realizes that Rashid loves her but he cannot be involved in the day to day raising of a child. Asha feels the responsibility is too much for her and after much thought, has an abortion. Although she faced trying times in her relationship with Rashid, the abortion was the most difficult decision she had made. Asha decides and tells Rashid that if she gets pregnant again, she will have their baby.
Prison is void of time; “prison toys with time, teases its meaning, confuses those of us trapped and defined by the fourth dimension. During visits and phone calls, minutes and hours disappear within a single greedy swallow” (129). Rashid and Asha live with the hope of a minute, “Rashid will be home in a minute (197). Years pass by like light posts on a street and he isn’t home. Appeals are lost and along with that, hope. Asha only wants to love Rashid and be with him and their separation breaks her heart; “when a heart breaks inside a prison, if it sounds like anything at all, then it sounds like a scream that’s trapped in a building caught on fire” (199). It is a desperate scream that does not succeed.
Sometimes Asha felt as if she committed the crime and needed to remind herself that she did not. She was only guilty of loving someone who did and with this came “absolute embarrassment of love” (212). In the end Asha realizes she is blessed and has Rashid because their story could be one of tragedy instead of one of love.
Although this novel was engaging, silences for the victim and his family was overlooked. Even Sister Helen took the time to get to know the victim’s families and evaluate the entire situation and she was just the spiritual advisor. Asha clearly states that she “does not know anything at all” (ending notes) about the victim’s wife. It just seems selfish and cold to completely ignore the facts of the crime. In addition, very little is said about the crime and this novel is more of “a love story” (214). “In just a minute,” an innocent life was lost.
December 11, 2006 at 8:15 am
Corinne – vulnerability is a big issue and you are right, it took Asha a great deal of courage to expose herself like she did. People seem to wear masks today and she definitely portrayed her rawest emotions.
December 11, 2006 at 3:19 pm
Dave:
Great opening. I saw that asha had all of the power to, which it looks like she used to her advantage at the end. Personally, I thought it was a bit unfair to Rahshid.
December 12, 2006 at 12:54 am
I think a lot of us looked at this book as a love story, but after reading the teacher’s comments in regards to our final project (the letter) I think that yet this is still a love story, but also a way for asha to vent about her life. I still find it brave of her to speak so freely of her life and to have it published and although some of us may not agree with the decissions she has made in her life we are not suuposed to judge her. Some people make choices which may be bad one’s, but in order to learn from them they have to make that mistake or bad choice. I know I did a lot in my life, but I am thankful for those bad choices. I learned from them and it has made me a better person today!!
December 12, 2006 at 11:41 pm
Crystal – I too have have bad choices that I have been forced to live with for the rest of my life. Some mistakes people learn from and others they must live with wether they learn from them or not. I just hope that asha realizes what she is doing to this mans heart and the consequences that may be possible in the future.
December 13, 2006 at 1:53 am
I agree!
December 13, 2006 at 11:11 am
This story and the op-ed that asha wrote for the New York Times has just left me very frustrated! I wanted to believe that this book was her laying open her soul for everyone to examine but now I can’t help but feel that she has left so much out of it, that there are huge holes hidden behind her prose. I would love to get Rashid’s side of the story, to hear what he has to say. I feel that asha manipulated the relationship to become something that fit in her life instead of molding her life around the relationship. Maybe she took advantage of the fact that Rashid is in prison for an undetermined time and lived the life of a single woman when she wasn’t with him. The sad fact is that we don’t know if asha’s book is the complete truth – not only does she have power over Rashid but she has power over all of us with the words she put to paper.
December 14, 2006 at 12:41 am
donna- i agree that it does seem like there are holes to the story. I think that is why the underlying theme of silence is so important. she literally tells us she has been silent and private all her life and this book and Rashid are her way of coming out. in my opinion it is impossible to completely change the roots of your personality…for lack of a better phrase “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”. It is definately important to recognize that by telling us that she is used to being a silent person that inevitably there will be things left out of the novel. i agree that i would like to hear Rashid’s version, however not in the context of the novel. Too much of his opinion, would have taken away from how much i appreciated her. it is not often we hear the wive’s pov.
December 14, 2006 at 9:12 pm
Asha does seem to be very self destructive, smoking, drinking, and partying when she was just 12, i know she didn’t invite the date rape and it was a terrible thing to have happen to anyone for any reason, but she needs to take into consideration where she was and what she was doing when the rape happened, was she inviting? There is a lot left out it seems, but i guess if i wrote my own story would I leave a lot out? Out of the two stories Luis and asha, I think Luis released more of his issues and accepted all the bad things he did by telling it how it was.
December 18, 2006 at 3:32 am
Jade – Inviting??? true people should be more aware of their surroundings and situations that make a person vulnerable, but no rape is an invitation.
December 26, 2006 at 10:07 pm
Dina McCarthy
The Prisoner’s Wife
Dmccarthy5@sbcglobal.net
Americancultures1395
Though asha in no way uses the words “feminist,” or “womanist” , all the while asserting a belief in the rights of women, her memoir clearly puts a contemporary spin on the feminist slogan “personal is political.” Written in the gloom of an increasingly corporatized and predatory prison system, Bandele depicts herself as the scarred heroine of this romance 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 effort to present her situation remarkably touching.
Bandele describes meeting Rashid as a college student reading poetry for a class in a New York State prison. Rashid’s attractiveness lies within his spirit as well as his physical attributes. 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. (Springer, 2001).
The dependency that asha has on Rashid, is what hangs on long after asha seals her story. Throughout her relationship with Rashid, she 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. Additionally, loving parents and her talents as a writer could not save her from the prison walls she would later build
Dina McCarthy
The Prisoner’s Wife
Dmccarthy5@sbcglobal.net
Americancultures1395
around herself as her own worst critic. The respect she feels from Rashid then opens up old wounds, causing her to revisit attacks on her self-esteem and body by older, often predatory, men. Sometimes consensual, sometimes coerced, asha seeks to come to grips with the impact of sexual assault on how she views herself as a woman and an individual.
She gives short shrift to her role in her own recovery, giving Rashid all the credit. Rashid is ultimately made out to be her savior. Recognizing his 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).
asha excuses Rashid’s devotion to patriarchal religion as a reaction to a childhood devoid of guidance and mentoring. Such pardons still do not help explain love in spite of, or because of, religious or political differences.
asha’s story is a memoir of learning about herself and Rashid, but this story 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. (Springer, 2001).
Resources:
Bandele, a. The Prisoner’s Wife.
Springer, K. (2001). Prisoners Wife. Retrieved from Sexing the Political website:
http://www.sexingthepolitical.org