Synopsis
Claireece Precious Jones is an overweight, illiterate black teenager pregnant with her second child--both the result of incest by her father--and infected with the AIDS virus--also thanks to her father. This first novel by the poet and performance artist Sapphire tells the story of how Precious miraculously finds redemption and deliverance through the efforts of one of her teachers, who teaches her to read and write.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1996-06-01 |
| Size | | Length: | 141 pages | | Height: | 8.3 in | | Width: | 5.8 in | | Thickness: | 1.0 in | | Weight: | 11.2 oz |
Publisher's Note
An electrifying first novel that shocks by its language, its circumstances, and its brutal honesty, Push recounts a young black street-girls horrendous and redemptive journey through a Harlem inferno. For Precious Jones, 16 and pregnant with her father's child, miraculous hope appears and the world begins to open up for her when a courageous, determined teacher bullies, cajoles, and inspires her to learn to read, to define her own feelings and set them down in a diary.
In an electrifying novel, a black street girl, sixteen years old and pregnant, again, with her father's child, speaks. In a voice that shakes us by its language, its story, and its unflinching honesty, Precious Jones records her journey up from Harlem's lowest depths... For Precious, miraculously, hope appears and the world begins to open up when a courageous black woman - a teacher hellbent to teach - bullies, cajoles, and inspires her to learn to read, to define her own feelings and set them down in a diary: to discover the truth of her life. Day after day they go over the pages, translating the illiterate but developing language of Precious' journals. The learning process itself, as vividly revealed as the most brutal aspects of Precious' daily existence, is the heartbeat of a novel that will disturb, galvanize, and stay in the mind.
Industry Reviews
"...[S]hort, brutal and painfully affecting....The novel is a story of almost total despair which trades on the possibility of hope. Most astutely drawn is the way in which Precious both comprehends her situation and is blind to it....Precious has a depth of character, humour, perversity and an engaging mixture of sassiness and naivety."
Times Literary Supplement - Alex Clark (10/11/1996)
"[A] much-talked-about first novel...that manages to be disturbing, affecting and manipulative all at the same time....Precious's street-smart, angry voice...conjures up Precious's gritty, unforgiving world. Sapphire somehow finds lyricism in Precious's life, and in endowing Precious with her own generous gifts for language, she allows us entree into her heroine's state of mind....Alice Walker's ghost hovers more and more insistently over PUSH as the novel progresses, lending Precious's story a blunt ideological subtext."
New York Times Book Review - Michiko Kakutani (06/14/1996)
"Despite its political incorrectness and its grim take on the realities of life in the inner city, PUSH is nevertheless a fascinating novel that may well find a place in the African American literary canon....Sapphire's work is sure to win as many hearts as it disturbs minds."
Philadelphia Inquirer - Jeannine DeLombard (06/23/1996)
"...[A]t the heart of PUSH is a lovely faith in the word. Literacy can't protect Precious from AIDS, but it can create wonder--not just bitterness."
Village Voice - Lisa Kennedy (06/25/1996)
"Sapphire displays a potent ability with language and even balances her intense narrative with pointed humor. The author refuses to serve as either moralizer or judge, but that unflinching quality is what makes PUSH especially challenging."
Quarterly Black Review of Books - P. J. Mark (09/01/1996)
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