bah.py

from sqlalchemy.ext.declarative import declarative_base
from sqlalchemy.orm.session import Session
from sqlalchemy import (
    create_engine,
    Column,
    Integer,
    UnicodeText,
)

Base = declarative_base()

class DemoTable(Base):
    __tablename__ = 'demo_table'

    id = Column(Integer(), primary_key=True)
    unicode_text = Column(UnicodeText())


# there's probably a simpler way to configure all this
engine = create_engine(
    'mysql://root:@blah/the_database?charset=utf8',
    encoding='utf8')
Base.metadata.create_all(bind=engine)
session = Session(bind=engine)

### THE MEAT ###

session.add(DemoTable(unicode_text=u"What a lovely day"))
session.flush()
session.expire_all()

print type(session.query(DemoTable).first().unicode_text)
# <type 'str'>

engine.dispose()