pushing awareness

"Afterwards we go out for coffee. I have never been 'out for coffee' before."
-Push by Sapphire
A life without thought or freedom. Living in the center of the universe, without ever leaving the burrough. Watching letters swim before eyes while a man, your father, rapes you.
These are the struggles of Claireece Precious Jones. This is all part of Push, a novel that rips you and your insides out of their comfort zone and into the invisible world of so many unseen. This novel is written from Precious' point of view and chronicles her story of becoming literate. Sapphire, an African-American poet from New York, creates this dramatic structure to introduce themes of race, gender, and memory that pull into question accepted societal norms.
With a distinct voice that remains consistent throughout the novel, Sapphire creates a victim. The narration is chopped into bits by flashbacks and memories, recreating, in a narrative form, post-traumatic stress syndrome: "The air floats like water wif pictures around me sometime. Sometimes I can't breathe." Neither can the reader, pulled as he is between visceral scenes of incestual violence and hopeful classroom scenes, set in the light and airy 19th floor.
Precious' relationship with her mother is one of physical, emotional, verbal, and sexual abuse. The layers of years and years of pain and suffering form a complex parallel to slavery, and the effects of slavery are manifested in Precious, a single person. Although it is a 16-year-old illterate's journey, Precious' road to enlightment drags the reader along too, mercilessly forcing lessons upon him that he didn't even know he needed. Stereotypes that are not even acknowledged are questioned, such as when Precious goes from yearning to be beautiful ("I was like a white girl, a real person, inside") to realizing that womanhood is more than skinny model-perfect exterior beauty.
The racism, sexism, and classism issues brought the surface in this novel are difficult. Difficult to acknowledge, process, and learn from. But they couldn't be more necessary.
In the words of Sapphire: "You gonna hafta push."