Daughter: A Novel [Paperback]

Daughter,a penetrating novel byEssenceeditor Asha Bandele and chosen byBlack Issues Book Reviewas Best Urban Fiction for 2003, follows a young woman through life that changes in one night from a horrific incident with police brutality.

At nineteen, Aya is a promising Black college student from Brooklyn who is struggling through a difficult relationship with her emotionally distant mother, Miriam. One winter night, Aya is shot by a white police officer in a case of mistaken identity. Keeping vigil by her daughter's hospital bed, Miriam remembers her own youth: her battle for independence from her parents, her affair with Aya's father, and the challenges of raising her daughter. But as Miriam confronts her past—her losses and regrets—she begins to heal and discovers a tentative hopefulness.

Moving between past and present, the novel builds to a dramatic, heart-wrenching but ultimately redemptive conclusion.Daughteris a novel that appears to be about police brutality, but police brutality is only the landscape. The heart of the story is about the silence between generations--the secrets mothers keep from their children in an effort to protect them.Asha Bandele served as features editor and writer forEssencemagazine, and a Revson Fellow at Columbia University. She is the author of the memoirThe Prisoner's Wifeand a collection of poetry. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her daughter.Chapter One

Eight Manchester Place: Wednesday, 7:15 A.M.

It was a morning thick with winter and a surprising sun. And the light was early. It was gliding down the two-block road, down the stripped-down street, down past where the old frame houses wore their paint like rags and did not concern themselves with frivolities like manicured front lawns or usable porches. The light coasted until it came to the corner where the small brick two-family house stood, stiff and alone.

Eight Mancl!