What do readers think of Something Like Beautiful by Asha Bandele? Write your own review.

I really enjoyed reading this book. It was well written and felt like the author put her heart and soul into this book. Her love for her daughter is shown through out the book and she sounds like a great mother. It really makes you take a look at your own life and be grateful for what you have. I would recommend this book to my friends and I am glad I had a chance to read it.

I loved this memoir! The prose is absolutely beautiful. This is a short book, but it packs in a lot of big emotions. If you have been a mother, loved and lost or ever felt depressed or lonely you will be able to relate to this woman. I will certainly be recommending this book and will be checking out her previous offerings.

Something Like Beautiful: One Single Mother’s Story by Asha Bandele is a poetically told memoir of the disappointments, joys and challenges of a single mother. Many of us who share that experience can relate to the deep honesty she relates, even though circumstances are different for us all. Her book touches on her struggle for identity, love and, ultimately, the triumph of finding herself and celebrating her daughter. It is well worth the read: book clubs would find it discussable and even some of my high school students would find it to be compelling.

This is overwhelmingly real. She has captured all the emotions, thoughts, suffering of many single mothers. Her story is the story of many women in the world. Even though it her story her words fit in the heart, mind and the mouth of many women of yesterday, today and tomorrow. I will recommend this book to everyone, but especially to the men of this world.

This book took me to places that I've never been, and gave me a new understanding of the challenges some people have. The author related her feelings and experiences in an honest, heartfelt way. With a lump in my throat, I kept reading and rooting for this amazing woman.

I will certainly recommend this book to all my friends. Thank you.

Jean Nelson
New Richmond, Ohio

If you enjoyed reading Nickel and Dimed, the story of a single woman trying to live on a minimum wag and James Frey's, A Million Little Pieces, a drug addict's memoir, you night enjoy Something Like Beautiful by Asha Bandele.

This memoir deals with being Black, being woman, wife and mother. Asha has incredible self-knowledge, knowledge that opens your eyes to 2008
Black issues and experiences; but also mirrors aspects of the human experience that could be life changing.

Asha has an unusual style of writing that captures the poet in us. Individual ideas branch out reminiscent of the experience of surfing the net. Her repetition of words, phrases and sentences that help us understand the inner wanderings of her subconscious.

This quote from Chapter 23, p.164, says it all.

I want my wounds to be acknowledged.
I want them healed.
And I want myself back.
That's what we all have to say, at some point what we have to demand.
Give me back.
Give me back.

This is a exquisitely written, lyrical memoir which shows with devastating force the psychological damage and life-long ramifications caused by childhood sexual abuse. Bandele focuses less on the actual details of her life and more on how she was able to cultivate the resilience and strength necessary to live as a survivor rather than as a victim. She does a marvelous job of showing the power and motivating force of love, especially the love of we have for our children.

A strong, honest memoir – Asa pulls no punches, however, I ask . . . as a single mother why would anyone deliberately put herself into this position of life – husband in jail, baby conceived in a trailer never to be able to enjoy the fruits of their love for each other.

As many other women, I too have wondered how women can stay in such abusive relationships, and after having read this sad, but beautiful book I came away with some new insight. This book is one woman’s story of the difficulties one faces in loving the “wrong” kind of man while trying to balance motherhood with work and one’s self. The subject matter is not for everyone. But for those interested in taking a look at someone's life from a different perspective, it's worth an afternoon of quiet reading.