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Precious
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Precious

Series: Precious (1)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
3,6511593,425 (3.82)133
Fiction. African American Fiction. Literature. HTML:An electrifying first novel that shocks by its language, its circumstances, and its brutal honesty, Push recounts a young black street-girl's 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.


From the Hardcover edition..
… (more)
Member:talibe2
Title:Precious
Authors:
Info:
Collections:Your library
Rating:*****
Tags:Intense Drama, Black

Work Information

Push by Sapphire

  1. 50
    The Color Purple by Alice Walker (Anonymous user, sruszala)
  2. 10
    The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (greytone)
    greytone: These books are similar because the protagonists begin their journey in the most dire of circumstances and the novels are the debut novels for the authors. Their stories end very differently, however; one triumphantly, the other tragically.
  3. 00
    The Children and the Wolves by Adam Rapp (kaledrina)
  4. 01
    Cashay by Margaret McMullan (meggyweg)
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» See also 133 mentions

English (154)  Spanish (2)  Swedish (1)  Finnish (1)  French (1)  All languages (159)
Showing 1-5 of 154 (next | show all)
Life Skills
  BooksInMirror | Feb 19, 2024 |
I liked this a lot more than I thought I would. I expected horror upon horror, which I got, but I didn't expect such moving, lyrical writing and a small ray of hope in the end. Bahni Turpin, the audiobook narrator, was outstanding as usual. ( )
  LibrarianDest | Jan 3, 2024 |
Sad and extremely moving--belies much of the loud rhetoric about endemic character flaws among the poor.
  Mark_Feltskog | Dec 23, 2023 |
Digital audiobook narrated by the author

I’ve wanted to read this ever since the Oscars ceremony that highlighted the film (which I have yet to see).

Precious Jones is a young pregnant black teenager, who is functionally illiterate and the product of an abusive home. But Precious has a fierce determination to care for the baby growing inside her and to better her life. She WILL learn to read. She WILL keep her baby. She WILL succeed.

The issues raised are horrific and difficult to read about and process. Brava to Sapphire for highlighting the plight of young people such as her protagonist. The writing is raw and brutal; the story is gripping and inspiring. My heart broke for Precious, even as I cheered her on.

I did have a copy of the text handy, as I typically do for audiobooks. But I didn’t look at it until I had finished listening. On opening that first page I am struck by the author’s use of vernacular dialect, and the kind of misspellings a person like Precious would resort to in writing her own story. I’m reminded of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, and how listening to the audio of that work made it easier to absorb the story.

The author narrates the audiobook herself, and I cannot imagine that anyone else would have done a better job. ( )
  BookConcierge | Oct 26, 2023 |
I didn't really want to read this book; however our f2f book-club wanted to. I could tell from the previews of the movie that this wasn't going to be an easy read as far as the topics. It was an easy ready as far as it was quick not very long. The subject is intense... but the character is interesting Precious becomes more herself as she learns to read and write. She has a voice and she eventually learns to use it. ( )
  lkubed | Oct 8, 2022 |
Showing 1-5 of 154 (next | show all)
What do you get if you borrow the notion of an idiosyncratic teen-age narrator from J. D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" and mix it up with the feminist sentimentality and anger of Alice Walker's "Color Purple"? The answer is "Push," a much-talked-about first novel by a poet named Sapphire, a novel that manages to be disturbing, affecting and manipulative all at the same time.
 

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Epigraph
If thou be one whose heart the holy forms
Of young imagination have kept pure,
Stranger! henceforth he warned; and knew, that pride,
Howe'er disguised in its own majesty,
Is littleness; that he who feels contempt
For any living thing, hath faculties
Which he has never used; that thought with him
Is in its infancy. The man whose eye
is ever on himself, doth look on one,
The least of nature's works, one who might move
The wise man to that scorn which wisdom holds
Unlawful, ever. O, be wiser thou!
Instructed that true knowledge leads to love...

William Wordsworth
Every blade of grass has its Angel that bends over it
and whispers, "Grow, grow'"

The Talmud
Dedication
For children everywhere. And for my teachers Eavan Boland, James Merrit, and most especially Susan Fromberg Schaeffer.
First words
I was left back when I was twelve because I had a baby with my fahver.
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Wikipedia in English (1)

Fiction. African American Fiction. Literature. HTML:An electrifying first novel that shocks by its language, its circumstances, and its brutal honesty, Push recounts a young black street-girl's 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.


From the Hardcover edition..

No library descriptions found.

Book description
Black, on welfare, HIV-positive, illiterate, and pregnant by her own father (again), sixteen-year-old Precious finds hope and a support group in the form of a literacy program lead by a gifted teacher.
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