Love is extremely precious. With all the commitments and contracts and vows made, love continues to be precious. Asha Bandele, the author of and as The Prisoner’s Wife: A Memoir, realizes that no matter if she is suspended from school or divorces her husband or disappoints her parents, love will conquer and triumph over hardships and mistakes. Asha was not a deprived child growing up in New York. She was able to attend respectable schools, live in a nuclear home, and have exposure to “the arts” (25). Her parents cared for her and gave her opportunities they did not have living in a world of anger and prejudice. Asha was exposed to love as a child and seems to believe as an adult that love does not have boundaries. These boundaries disappear if the love given is unconditional.Unconditional love is apparent in Asha’s relationship with Rashid. There are two events when their relationship is ironic. Asha’s love allowed her, even after Rashid’s confessions about his life to her, to “lie, as fitted as possible, in the crook of his arms” wanting to be in “no other place” (16). She feels protected by Rashid’s arms while he is protected, yet restrained, inside a jail. This protection both Asha and Rashid receive is ironic because just as Asha needs protection and comfort from the realities of her life, the world outside of jail needs to be protected from Rashid’s crime. And protection is found in jail, a harsh, cold, and brutal lifestyle. Yet within this lifestyle, Asha reaches into her heart and soul to expose not only herself, but also Rashid to love that abides no rules or laws. The love has no strings attached. It is unconditional.The second irony is when Asha confesses that throughout her two dimensional relationship with Rashid, she “didn’t lose hope…kept reaching, compulsive, like an addict” (37). Asha’s relationship wit...
