My Review on The Book “Push” / Upcoming Movie “Precious”
Before I get into my thoughts on the book, I would like to personally invite you to the What Women Want Literary Journey event this Sunday in which myself and a whole room of focused, insightful ladies will be talking about it in detail. It’s going to be awesome annnnnnnnnd I’m co-hosting plus selling books there, so come cop your signed copy of LAID. Click the pic above to go to the event page to buy tickets or click here (no excuses round these parts). The book is less than 150 pages and I finished it in two days, while at work! Hurry and buy, there are less than 15 tickets left and I would love to see my people out 
Now onto the book…
I am an avid reader. I’ve mentioned this before but I don’t believe you get it. I only listen to audio books in the car and I always have a book on my iPod and in my hands – which means I am reading three books at any given time. I have read The Kite Runner, I have read all of Dan Brown’s books, I used to obsessively read about unicorns, I’ve read about Geishas, I just finished reading about a white girl living in a coloured house with A Secret Life of Bees and in all of those books there has been a time that I’ve lost myself in the story. There has been a moment where I took a bathroom break and half expected to see the main character’s face starring back as I washed my hands.
This is the first time I have read a book where I felt absolutely no connection or relation to the main character. I do not know a Precious and part of me is grateful while the other part of me recognizes that this is probably a reflection of how obliviously privileged I have been.
Precious is illiterate and the book is written in first person, thus the book reads like it’s from someone illiterate talking. There are even parts where it’s written directly from Precious as she begins to learn how to write. I hate to admit this but in many cases I had to skip over these parts. I found it too frustrating to sift through the broken text for long periods of time. But this is also because I did not have that much tolerance for the main character. Why? Because I don’t think I liked her.
A lot of Precious’ pain comes from the outside world for typecasting her or “not seeing her for “who she truly is” yet all throughout the book all she does is judge other people unfairly! She has so much hate towards strangers and an unwillingness to learn other’s personal story, which makes her seem like the biggest hypocrite to me and that’s what bugged me the most about her. There are other things to, she is vulgar, rude and ignorant. But that being said it doesn’t take much more than the first ten pages to understand why she is the way she is. Precious is a victim of some horrific circumstances. Circumstances that made me hate her for describing to me because I did not want to be put in her shoes or have my mind move to the possibility of such disturbing corners.
Her openness brings me to why you love her: she trusts you and mostly only you. Her whole life she has kept quiet, been beat down, told to disappear and only paid attention to when there were heinous motives involved. She shares these things with the reader because we are the first to listen and in the end we learn that she truly has so much love to give, she just needed someone in her miserable life to step up and lead by example.
What really helped me to appreciate the book was the back of the book which shared the stories of the other girls in her class. My favourite of these stories was written by the girl Jermaine but I suspect I feel that way because Jermaine was the strongest writer and I was happy to take a break from the broken english.
Okay I won’t say much more! If you live in Toronto come to the Literary Journey and let’s continue the convo there. If you don’t live in Toronto, tell me your thoughts now! Because the book is so vulgar plus it touches on some topics that I have never seen in a movie before plus there is not a conventional happy ending I am very interested to see how the movie will depict the story.
Shannon – 1,2,3….DISCUSS - Boodram
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yea im still reading it…i started reading the day i got it but got distracted and stopped reading for a couple days.
I didnt find the messed up grammar a problem. I actually found it slightly humorous. Like the first sentence of the book just caught me off guard. “I was left back when I was twelve because I had a baby by my fahver” <-(father)….and "My daughter got Down Sinder" <-(down syndrome) I literally laughed out loud but i soon stopped laughin cuz i def sympathize. Embarrassing to say but my 2 cuz's r practically illiterate @ an age where they shouldnt be. It's def nurture rather than nature cuz they lost their mom @ a young age and no1 in their household really stressed getting a proper education. I relate this to precious because she is def. a product of her environment as well. There's no way she could have avoided being this way if this is the only life she has known. It truly does make me appreciate EVEYTHING i have cuz i mean that could have been me if that's how God wanted it to be.
It's easy for me to read cuz I do know and have known some Precious' who speak/write/act like this and some of which who have been abused as well. It's really sad cuz "the system" is structured in a way that makes it hard to get out of that kinda environment, lifestyle and mentality.
I'll prob finish the book tomorrow so i can fully comment but that's all i can say for now.
Wow! I’m surprised at your review… as an aspiring psychologist I saw all the mental and environmental things that caused her to act out and I saw that she did an amazing job at learning love and growing into a well rounded human being once HUMANITY was finally introduced to her life.
I picture Precious as the girl that grew up locked in a basement and abused with no interaction from loved ones; she had no clue what being loved was.
She was strong from the very beginning because she knew that her experience was very wrong and she did what she had to to make it change.
I’m both shocked and amazed by your analysis… Mostly because I can now see it through another persons perspective… It is sooo true that most people live the charmed life and don’t have a clue what it’s like to be forced into adulthood.
Plus, as an author and a journalist you were more disturbed by her illiteracy than the average bear (me) I thought it was effective because it brought me to understand her level of thought (again with the psychology mumble jumbo).
The mother in this story was what she might have became if she continued down that awful path I was very inspired by that…
We’ll talk at the event
i read this book in 7th grade. It was one of the first books i ever picked up to read for fun (meaning it wasnt assigned by a teacher) but yeah, the book almost had me in tears a couple times.
Within the first few pages of this book, I instantly thought, “so this is like a modern day ‘Color Purple’?
What I found most interesting is that later in the book, she reads the Color Purple and sees Celie’s story as her own. Perhaps somewhere a young girl is reading this book seeing her own life in that of Precious. Though i am grateful that this girl was not me, I do have to agree with Shannon in that it was difficult for me to connect with this character. I felt sad for her and admired her ability to PUSH against all odds; however, I didn’t put it down feeling inspired and stronger within myself, in the way I felt after reading ‘the Color Purple’ and even ‘Queen’. My only reaction after reading the book was “well, good for her.”
I felt something stronger should have resonated with me, but it didn’t. Maybe that makes me a bad person, I don’t know.
I actually felt as though I should have liked the book a lot more because Oprah is backing it…..it’s called the Oprah effect, and like it or not we are all influenced by it.
In saying that, I am very much looking forward to seeing the film and attending the WWW book discussion.
-Lauren
I picked up the book about 2 years ago when we first moved to Texas and still didn’t have a house to live in so there was no tv. I started reading it and got frustrated with the way it was written. I couldn’t get through it and I remember telling my mother that it was just ignorant and I was very mad that a book was published like that.
After about a year I picked it up again since I had run through every other book I had and decided to get through it. Initially I thought it was a bit farfetched with the extent of the abuse but after talking to my mom about the book, she made me realize that it could be someone’s reality.
I was happy for precious as you saw her grammar and writing getting better and her walls being torn down bit by bit. I can’t wait to see how it plays out in the movie. From the previews, it looks like it will be intense.
I read the book in early summer and I completely understand the frustration felt during the broken english parts. The story was very compelling and heart wrenching. I can see how you would view Precious as judgemental and ignorant but she is just a product of her environment. And unfortunately, I have come across many people like Precious. I could not relate to the character but I felt tremendous sympathy for her. The Jermaine story (backstory?) is very interesting as well, and I found myself wanting to know more about that character and her past. I can.not. wait for the movie. It’s suppose to be up here this weekend.
book recommendations
I’m currently reading Nigger by Dick Gregory, just finished reading Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri.
@ Lauren, I didn’t see it like that but yes it is like a modern day Color Purple.
from another blog that I thought was an interesting comment:
Via Charlamagne’s guest blog on XXL:
I know people’s lives are f*cked up. There’s kids getting abused by their parents and suffering with HIV. Kids that are obese and ugly. Young girls who are raising kids with no support, but to see someone suffering with all of the above? At 16 years old? I’m not saying it can’t happen I’m just saying I believe some things were sensationalized for book and movie purposes.
Another thing I noticed about the movie is that everybody who was White and light skin was some kind of angel, but the dark skin people in the movie were devils. Paula Patton’s character, the teacher; Mariah Carey’s character, the welfare agent, Lenny Kravitz, the nurse; Precious’ imaginary light skin boyfriend who she wanted to come rescue her from the bullshit were all depicted as the saviors of the world.
All the dark skin characters—her father, her mother, etc. were evil! Not to mention Precious looking in the mirror and envisioning herself as a White woman. Why a White woman? Even if she wanted to see herself as a beautiful, in shape woman, why did it have to be a White woman?
Shannon SMH I thought I was the only one who had these feelings. We really need to talk about this. I honestly fully understand what you’re saying and I truly thought I was the only one who had these thoughts.
We need to talk, there’s too much to say here.
Sisters from another mister perhaps??
Also, I think “Ugly” by Constance Briscoe is better in so many ways.
@Kali
I also noticed that her teacher was light skinned with straight hair in the movie but came off as a rough lady with dreads who was a lesbian in the book. I don’t understand why they changed that character when she was the one that seemed to have the most effect on Precious.
Read this article Shan! I think this book will be my next purchase. Apparently we’re not the only ones not sold on Push.
http://www.shadowandact.com/?p=12410
Apparently there’s only one copy of the book in TO, but you can order it at Amazon only.