Sapphire: Precious (also called Push)

[jaybe]

Has any one else read this? It hooked me immediately and is very disturbing.

 

[eldog]

I read it last year when the movie was released (but I still haven't seen the movie).

I definitely agree that it was disturbing and very sad in many ways. I thought there were far too many compounding issues for the main character to deal with and still to be realistic. But I'm sure that such extreme cases do exist.

It is a very short book so I would recommend it to others.

 

[beer good]

Novelist Sapphire complains of 'very real' racism in the arts | Books | guardian.co.uk

Speaking at the Edinburgh international book festival, Sapphire said that when Push – the novel that became the film Precious – was published, readers found it difficult to grasp that she, the author, was separate from its impoverished, abused, illiterate narrator.

"I remember when Push came out, there was shock when people saw me – they'd say: 'You're not 16, you're not obese. We thought this was your life story.'

"It was as though they thought this was some illiterate teenager's life story and I had spoken it into a tape recorder, and some white editor had written it."

She said: "It's as if black artists are only able to tell autobiographical horror stories and don't have an imagination. There was an idea I wouldn't have been able to conceive of [the narrator] Precious's life unless I had lived it; there's an idea I wouldn't have the ability to write about a young African-American male without somehow living as a male. But the idea that I could not read and study and use my imagination and create and craft a character has been very real and very painful to me."