67. Push - Sapphire

This incredibly sad and moving book was the basis for Tyler Perry's most recent movie, Precious. The story is about Claireece Precious Jones: an obese, illiterate, dark-skinned, HIV positive teenager in Harlem - who had a daughter at twelve by her sexually abusive father, and who was pregnant again with another one of his children by the age of sixteen. It's impossible to read this book and not be overwhelmed with emotion for this poor girl. From one passage, where Precious was describing her life not long after the birth of her first child who has Down Syndrome:

"Sometimes I wish I was not alive. But I don't know how to die. Ain' no plug to pull out. 'N no matter how hard I feel my heart don't stop beating and my eyes open in the morning. I hardly have not seen my daughter since she was a little baby. I never stick my bresses in her mouth. My muver say what for? It's outta style ... She say I never do you. What that child of yours need tittie for? She retarded. Mongoloid. Down Sinder."

She actually called the baby "Little Mongo" throughout the book ... I was hoping that was some awful nickname that she gave the baby, but no other name was ever shared. From another passage, talking about her son ...

"When he grow up he gonna laff big black girls? He gon' laff at dark skin like he got? One thing I say about Farrakhan and Alice Walker they help me like being black. I wish I wasn't fat but I am. Maybe one day I like that too, who knows."

The author certainly doesn't hold back: some parts were incredibly, incredibly ... raw. I was shocked. Other parts aren't as explicit but make you want to cry:

"I always thought I was someone different on the inside. That I was just fat and black and ugly to people on the OUTSIDE. And if they could see inside me they would see something lovely and not keep laughing at me, throwing spitballs (shit one time nigger at school just spit on me when I was pregnant) and polly seed shells at me, that Mama and Daddy would recognize me as ... as, I don't know, Precious!"

Definitely one of those books that leaves you feeling very emotionally drained; but thankfully, the ending does leave the reader with hope.