The Prisoners Wife By Asha Bandele: A Review

The book is supposedly A Love Story. But I don't know what to make of it---It's too full of recriminations, regrets, resentments, and condescension to be a result of love, as love is understood by the human condition.

The setting for this "Love" is Prison, not any prison for that matter but the insidious and
Machiavellian enterprise of an American prison, The Department of Corrections of The State of New York. The story is a reflection of the tumultuous state of American cultural expression and it's subjective, American Hearts and Minds, because if the cultural and emotional expression of the human is simply a sum of character, then love as the ultimate value of emotion and its medium culture will reflect the state and nature of its subjective. Emotion in the most sublime of conditions and environment is still a strange and mysterious beast, add the ingredient of the most alienative and perverted environmental condition known to humanity, prison and what will you have? What you should have is the sum value of human character, that baptism by fire through adversity, that qualitative redemption from the disjointedness of chaotic quantity but Ms. Bandele fails to even have an inkling of the maxim "I'm Solitude made Man" ---- Solitude which in this context is anguish, that accomplice of love, love which she claims.

The author's emotional consciousness is either objectively malnourished or her alienation from the objectivity of her femininity is so complete that she is confused, She mistakes the adventurous inclination of her Eros with that most consuming of emotions, "Love". Whether or not she wants to face up to and has the presence of mind to acknowledge it, she simply had a stimulating adventure with a prisoner, a test in that most simplistic and primitive of human urges, self-gratification in its motive of one-upmanship. As she tongue in cheek, succinctly puts it "I wanted to be important to someone again" [ pp.27]

For starters, Rashid her beloved, lover and subsequent husband is too one-dimensional and acquiescent, an emasculated corollary of collateral damage from the war between the sexes submitting disgracefully to his wife Asha's each and every undisciplined desire an infantile idealism for whatever it is and was, that was between them to be of that higher human emotion, Love, The only excusable rationalization for his behavior is the stimulus of the relationship in-it self and its satisfying impact on his "...Scorched-Earth" [pp.165] psyche was enough to overlook the dominance of his wife and that spells eunuchism.

Asha, on the other hand, would have us, readers believe that her most yearned for desire and sought for reality is to have her imprisoned mate free and with her, yet when she is impregnated, granted the germinating testimonial seed of their love, she has no problem aborting the fetus.

What is striking and revealing is at every turn of the way, their way and obstacles crop up, which in the general sense, with its solution or how they contend with it would enable their humaneness to define and give credibility to the love they purportedly share both fail its qualification pathetically. Rashid the prisoner and husband for being effeminate and obeisant to his wife's each and every indulgence and Asha the wife for misplacing her need for self-affirmation and its redemptive catharsis with love.

The author presents an unstated and treacherous premise that the pursuit of emotional, mental and physical communion between the imprisoned human and a free one is utterly unrealistic, futile and its fidelity is unattainable--- this premise itself raises the question of what role if any those higher sentient and sapient potentials of humanness plays in the condition of love, not as we misconstrue it to be but as we aspire it to be. If as we are wont to say that love has many facets and conditions then Rashid and Asha's rank at that, no greater than the sum of their undeveloped psyches. What then is Ms. Bandele telling us, "that the spirit is willing but the body is weak"? Or the whole relationship was nothing more than an academic project that is now bearing fruit with her writing a book about it.

To make a long story short "The Prisoners Wife" is a story of relationship between male and female and their dishonesty and inability in coBming to terms with the fact that they lacked the manhood and womanhood to develop, nurture and sustain love in that most stifling of environments------Prison.

I close with Asha Bandele invoked Assata Shakur's
"...If I know anything at all
it's that a wall is just a wall
and nothing more at all.

It can be brought down."

And for 219 pages made a mockery of it with erecting that most noxious of walls       
"condescension".

By William Thorpe, I am detained in Solitary Confinement at Virginias Red Onion State Prison

Cold War of American Racism

Credit William Thorpe

Speech By William Thorpe

Credit William Thorpe

 

What Difference Would It Make and The Speaking Rock

Were the nation to devolve into civil disorder and the inevitable Civil War; what difference would it make who sat on the Supreme Court?

What difference would it make whether Roe vs. Wade was repealed.

What difference would it make were abortion to become illegal.

What difference would it make were marriage equality were repealed.

What difference would it make were Transgenders deemed second class citizens.

What difference would it make were ObamaCare repealed or it's problems fixed.
What difference would the social-engineering of block grants to states in any form and individual accounts of any purpose mean, whether its health savings or the privatization of Social Security.
After the idea of equality before the law has been shattered and it's practice revealed as speculative and fraudulent.  What difference would it make if kids prayed at schools.
What difference would it make were the entire nation to become right to work charade.
What difference would it make that despite the dogma of vouchers, charters and religious schools we were still illiterate enough to devolve into Civil War?
What difference would it make that the lie is knowingly repeated that taxpayers fund abortions at Planned Parenthood clinics and salvation for our collective sins is defunding planned Parenthood and Woman Health Care apparatus.
What difference would the idealistic and intellectually-Liberal criticism of "political-correctness" mean.
What difference would banning Muslims mean, if the illiteracy bent on degrading, destroying and mocking the idea that holds us one is the clear and present danger our Constitution reminds we remain vigilant against the destruction from within.
What difference does it ever make for Conservatism and it's reaction to reduce progress and it's intrinsic liberty to an intellectually-Liberal critique that ignores the theological dicta that God regardless of name doesn't even have the answers and needs the devil for affirmation.
What difference does it make that the taxation polemic and critique is still formulated upon archaic feudalistic antagonisms at the expense of the fact that the valuation realization of money has long since abandoned idealistic standards of gold and now stands revealed as it should always be: objectivity of art, creativity, ambition and industry.
What difference does it make that we are still clubbed by illiteracy and it's ignorance into accepting hypocrisy as judgment and resentments as enlightenments'
What difference does it make that if government is "off, by and for the people." But we accept the deflection, that government isn't the solution but the problem we are negating our very aspirations as the people.
What different does it make that evangelism demands to fossil fuels we pray, to climate change denying we pray, to ape and Man share not common ancestry we pray at the expense of its New Testament proclaiming even rocks will speak and if such a mystery of the speaking rock is possible why then should evolution be at odds.
What difference does it mean if we buy into a phony critique that Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, Public Employee Pensions, all Welfare programs, ObamaCare are "entitlements" that somehow subscribe to alien behaviors at odds with what money is, even Grandma's money under the mattress.
What difference does it make if we bestow credibility on The American Enterprise Institute recent assertion that poor people are unproductive and irrelevant. As if rich people cannibalize themselves and emerge and exist independent of the function of poor people and the accumulation of Walmart's billions doesn't have a direct line to Welfare allocation and the shopping by Welfare recipients.
What difference does it mean if Black People are told to make your own way, find your own way.  But as soon as White people in fly over country and it's de-industrialized midwest, express angst and exhibit classic symptoms of joblessness. We are told it's the much-maligned government's purpose to provide jobs for them.  Even as those very same White people voted over and over against government and for those speculative models of Republican governance and it's Reaganomics, who's consequence and result is de-industrialization and job losses.
What difference does it make if the rule of law cannot deprive us of life and liberty without it's due process.  But we accept, standard operating procedures, subjective perspective, the ignorance of fear, it's bias of illiteracy as substitution.  A reduction of the rule of law and it's due process to a petty, De Minimus failure of non-immediate, instantaneous compliance with police commands; is a waiver of the right to life and liberty.  It's obscene perversion captured by the utterance of a White juror.  "If my son behaved as the Black victim of a police shooting [non-immediate, instantaneous compliance with police commands] the police are right to kill them.
What difference does it make if prison officials in administrating prisons violate the rule of law that transforms free citizens into prisoners imprisoned, an embodiment of the Nixonian corruption that when the President does it, it is not a crime.
What difference does it make if we understand and know more about God than the money we recreate conditions of our existence with.  That the lies we accept as Political-Economy truth are: national debt and deficit if governmental spending isn't trimmed [which selectively means if Welfare programs are not slashed] will bankrupt us and the suppositionary specter of our proverbial grandkids enslaved by a bank that exist only in the clouds evoked.  So citizens whose literacy of what is money only extends to the antagonisms of their personal micro-relationship with it are alienated from the question: were the nation to devolve into civil disorder and the inevitable Civil War.  What difference would it make if pre-Civil War our national debt was $18 trillion and we have to come to terms with American exceptionalism being simply the literacy of cognition and comprehension that facts are objectivity.  Meaning irrespective of our existence and yes we are privileged with perspectives not in spite of but in affirmation and the averse function of organized violence is that Sword of Damocles reminding us of its Sisyphean futility that after it's all said and done we are homo sapiens and not homo martial and no amount of threats of annihilation and it's fact dislodge the inexorable cognitive principle, to which even the speech of Civil War is its affirmation.
By William Thorpe
&
Apropos

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The American Status Quo, It's Policing Organized Violence, Black Masculinity, Cooperation and Control

The Idea that the American status quo and it's policing organized violence is fearful and threatened by Black masculinity isn't wholly accurate and can be disproven by the level of injustice the American status quo and it's policing organized violence metes out to Black masculinity.  Because if the American status quo and it's policing organized violence was fearful and threatened by Black masculinity, it would be cautious and circumspective in it's blatant and overt practice of injustice, because the prospect of retaliation and retribution would loom large in it's Conservative imperative, but as the murderous practices of it's policing organized violence shows us, it's oblivious.

What however is accurate and correct is Black masculinity, in the calculus of the American status quo is to be controlled and as much as the American status quo and it's policing organized violence denigrates and dehumanizes Black masculinity it requires cooperation from Black masculinity to effect the control.  Meaning the American status quo and it's policing organized violence recognizes the humanity of Black masculinity as a comprehending medium even as it propagandizes the dehumanization of Black masculinity, a recognition that exposes the petty base nature of the controlling dynamic.

By William Thorpe Held at ROSP in Solitary Confinement

Religion is the New Racism, Intellectual-Liberalism, Charity and it's Political-Economy Contradictions

Religion is the new Racism.  Specifically, it is that old friend tyranny guised up under the Johnny-Come-Lately of the monkey see monkey do banner of that lover of the Human Condition, ignorance.

Racism being intolerance and beyond the pale is understood by the most backwardly naive to the sophisticated cynic.  But religious intolerance in all it's diverse forms thrives from planes slamming into the Twin Towers and Pentagon to the shrilling babel of voices across the land that places of unfamiliar worship and fellowship are sinister and evil.

Intellectual activity during ages past was of reason and enlightenment, laboring for tolerance and selfless apathy.  Intellectual activity in the age of religion is the new Racism labors for intolerance and it's defense.  It is Intellectual-Liberalism resurrecting the most crass, idealistic and misanthropic attitudes.  Religion is the new Racism is selfishness wrapped in the mantle of charity and it's Political-Economy contradictions.

From every religious fundamentalism to it's reaction and intolerance, religion is the new Racism has pathetically shown itself to be the bastion of Farmers Almanac aphorisms, pop psychology, and snake oil charlatans.  Each hypocritically requiring it's purported antithesis for survival and existence.

By Apropos

Our Coat of Many Colors and January 21st

God sees forest,
Fallen Angels see trees.

We are seen as one, alive, dead, dying or living, sitting, standing, we are one in our coat of many colors.

For 8 seconds Barack Obama reminded us of our one coat of many colors    till we remembered it was summer of hypocrisy, so we took off the coat to remind ourselves of the imperfections of our nakedness     scorned blue lacerated red clotting resentment.

And God sees forest,
and Fallen Angels walk among the trees.

Who is right is a cynical comedy of irrelevancies, we chuckle, brows knitted that the seer of forest taught it all came from the wrong of Women anyway.  And January 21st was the anyway.  Our arteries clogged with our Women wronged.  The one coat of many colors shimmering in the prism of honesty without the sophistry of alternative.  That scorn and resentment in its cynical comedy of irrelevancies stitch us one in our one coat of many colors.

And God sees Forest,
And Fallen Angels smelling the lonesomeness, apathetic towards enlightening, walk among trees.

By William Thorpe detained at Red Onion State Prison