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asha bandele’s Prescient Novel ‘Daughter,’ re-released as eBook with a Healing Guide in Time for the Two-Year Anniversary of the Death of Michael Brown


2016 Edition to Feature Healing Guide for Witnesses and Survivors of Police Violence with Essays from Harry Belafonte, Founders of BlackLivesMatter, Michelle Alexander, Rashad Robinson, Susan L. Taylor, and Kadiatou Diallo Among Others

NEW YORK–(ENEWSPF)–August 9, 2016—asha bandele’s prescient first novel, Daughter, is to be re-released tomorrow as an eBook with a guide designed to encourage healing and self-care in a time when so many Americans have been harmed by witnessing and experiencing police violence.

Scribner, the book’s publisher is releasing the e-book in time for the two-year anniversary of the death of Michael Brown, an African American teenager killed by a white police officer, which touched off months of protests in Ferguson, Michael’s hometown, and across the country. An intimate portrayal of a strained mother-daughter relationship in the aftermath of a shooting, Daughter explores the strengths, silences, and tangled inheritance of trauma passed from mother to child.

Edwidge Danticat, author of Breath, Eyes, Memory, described it as a “wonderful first novel about the very complex ties that bind mothers and daughters” and a work that “will move and transform you.”

bandele recalls spending time with Kadiatou Diallo in the aftermath of her unarmed, innocent son’s killing in 1999.  “Mrs. Diallo is nothing like my main character but spending time with her made me think less about the police shooting itself—which is what we all were talking about—but about what it does to the heart of a woman to live with this kind of trauma. Amadou Diallo was shot 41 times with some of those bullets entering the bottom of his feet,” bandele said.  “So it was hard not to focus on something that heinous. But at the end of the day there is a family, a mother, who has to go to try to put a life back together with this blood memory.  I tried to explore that and with the wisdom of the contributors to the healing guide, I hope to stave off at least some of the collateral harm done to we who are living through this terrible period.”

More now than ever, Daughter is an essential addition to the national conversation about police shootings and state-sanctioned racism. As police violence against African Americans entered the national conversation, an epidemic of shooting deaths emerged, a phenomenon that tragically continues to this day. “bandele’s groundbreaking work first threw light on this crisis in 2003, more than a decade before the events of Ferguson. Thirteen years after its release, it remains a crucial part of the dialog,” says Kathryn Belden, executive editor at Scribner.

This new eBook edition of Daughter includes a new Healing Guide—a crucial tool for resistance, self-care, and survival in these increasingly troubled times. With essays by Harry Belafonte, Patrisse Marie Cullors, Kirsten West Savali, Michelle Alexander, Monifa Bandele, Esther Armah, Lumumba Bandele, Rashad Robinson, Brittney Cooper, Malkia Cyril, Alicia Garza, Sekou Odinga, Marc Lamont Hill, Susan L. Taylor, and Kadiatou Diallo, the Healing Guide is an essential addition to this timeless work.

bandele is the author of four other books, a journalist and advocate.  She holds a senior director position with the Drug Policy Alliance and is communications consultant for the National CARES Mentoring Movement. The healing guide that accompanies the 2016 edition of Daughter aims to be, in bandele’s words, “a conspiracy of survival.”

Source: http://www.drugpolicy.org

 

 

 


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