I bought and read the book Push by Sapphire yesterday while getting my hair done. Yes, I read the book in a matter of hours — it was that engaging. Granted it’s not a very large book, but there were several times I had to put it down. As many of you know by now, Push is the book that inspired the movie Precious. When I first saw the trailer months ago I thought “That looks good, I will make sure I go see that.” However, at the time I didn’t really know how deep that rabbit hole went. Of course as the movie gained more exposure and the book became talking point of the year, more information about Precious’ story came to light and I began to get a bit uncomfortable.
However, curiosity and the desire to understand got the best of me and I finally got the book yesterday. I would say that from the beginning I was completely caught off guard. The story is told by Precious and for some reason that made a big impact on me. Her story was told in a way that rung too real to me. My naive mind could never grasp that things like that really happened to real people. It’s interesting because in the story, she couldn’t believe it either. To put it mildly, the things conveyed in her story are horrific. So much so that I didn’t even feel comforted by the fact that it was a work of fiction. My heart ached for Precious. While Precious is not a real person she does truly exist and that terrifies me. How many people do we pass in the streets and just write them off as being trash, bums, invisible? How many people would we stop to help if we knew their story? How often to we stop to hear their story?
You know a lot of people live by the “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” theory and I understand that. However, it’s not always 100% that easy. Precious is a story of success; however, it should have never gotten to the point that it did. That’s what bothers me. Precious is a victim in every sense of the word yet the average person upon seeing a girl like her would probably write her off as nothing in the blink of an eye. After being pregnant twice as a child, she would be seen as a loose whore who doesn’t deserve a decent life. Yet that couldn’t be further from the truth. I wonder how many girls lay in hospital beds after giving birth and say “I was raped” or “this is my father’s child” and the workers keep on moving? Who is there for the child that watches her mother killed and is left by her father? Who will mend the girl that had to sell herself on the streets because she had NO OTHER OPTION. And the people who are against protection for street workers crack me up. You don’t have a clue. Some people don’t have bootstraps to pull.
I don’t blame you for not having a clue though, neither did I. This past weekend I met up with “My Kid’s” book club and we read some pretty cute books together. I look at them and pray for their innocence even though I know it’s not easy. I fear what could be going on behind the closed doors in my neighborhood and I would just die to hear if something of the same magnitude of the things Precious encountered were happening. However, that is why I make it a point to be a listening ear and a trusting friend to these girls. Many of you saw me tweeting about taking my neighbor to school that is 13 years old. I talked about how she’s so developed physically but delayed academically. I complained that I didn’t know how to reach her. After reading Precious the fire inside me to fight even harder to reach this girl grew 1000-fold. She may not live Precious’ story, but there were several other women in the book that were victims. It shined so much light on other possibilities that I will not let my neighbor go until I know that she knows she can always come to me.
Don’t be that person that walks by and casts a disgusting look at the person struggling. While they may appear to you as nothing, they are everything. Would you be able to live a life like that? Take away all you’ve ever known and force you to live in hell, I don’t know if you would fare the same. I’m not sure I would. The minds of these people have been warped, but not lost. I pray for the success of women and men out there struggling to pull themselves out of the hell they’ve been placed in. Everything happens for a reason though and their struggle does not have to be in vain. While we are not in the homes of every person crying, dying, and trying, we do encounter them. If someone reaches out to you, take hold.
I want to say a special shout out to my educators out there doing the MOST in the BEST way to help these children. Kiesha, Vasti, Chaz, Adrian, Sean, Tiara, and many more. If I forgot your name it was my mind not my heart. To all my friends out there that give their time mentoring and volunteering at homeless shelters, battered women shelters, and advancement programs, thank you. Clearly there is money out there to fund wars, but not to take care of the people not fighting. Thank you for doing it for free because otherwise it wouldn’t get done.
I know too many awesome and intelligent individuals for us not to be able to think of ways to make impacts in our communities that could snowball into a larger effect. Let’s get on it.
****Can I just say the the actress that played Precious, Gabby Sidibe, is AMAZING. She’s truly an amazing person and proof that you can love yourself no matter how people may try to get you not to. Oh I just can’t wait to see her career skyrocket!
Article by Jennifer Garrett
JG* is a small-town turned big-city blogger who once wrote the random yet ever-creative look into the life of a girl entering the Quarterlife. These days as she prepares for her MBA program at The Ohio State University she's turned into quite the "Susie The Riveter." Working with teens by day, cooking delicious meals at night. Check out her blog showcasing her delicious recipes at http://jgrunsthekitchen.wordpress.com. Follower her on Twitter @JGRunsTheCity
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I am reading the book right now, I started it awhile ago and couldn’t finish it.. but I picked it back up and cannot stop thinking about it.. I am disgusted yet intrigued.. There are so many people.. not just poor people on the street.. but people who have everything that go through abuse like this, who are tortured by life.. There are so many people that we want to help, but many times just don’t know where to start, or are fearful by facing mirror images of ourselves.. volunteering and helping people takes more courage and stamina than people would think.. because you don’t just grab a little kid at the YMCA, take him to the playground & he’s automatically a better person.. it takes time to build relationships and understand in order to help.. and time is what a lot of people don’t believe they have.. Basically I am saying, we all need to let go of whatever selfishness holds us back from helping others and just do it.. I cannot wait to finish the book and see the movie.. although I am tramautized by much of what I’ve read..
When I read Push by Sapphire for the first time, I was 13 years old, attending school in one of the “hood” parts of Brooklyn. By that time, Push had already become one of the books that every black girl HAD to read. I didn’t realize until after I left New York City that this book was still very unknown.
To this day, only 7 years later, it is still one of the most inspiring, memorable, and real books I’ve ever read. I’ve always been an avid reader, I especially loved books by black authors, but this book was didn’t feel like a book to me. It was like I was talkin to my homegirl. I could easily imagine Precious as a homegirl because I she was another girl trying to make it in the world, even if that world seems to put everything against her. She’s constantly hoping for something better, she KNOWS there’s something better, even if she felt could never reach that something, she knew it was there. Not only that, she ACCEPTED the help she was given, even if it was reluctantly. Because of the people that I knew and interacted with living in Brooklyn, her life obviously sucked really bad, but it wasn’t far fetched. I feel like many people who’ve seen or read the story aren’t seeing the big picture, they’re focusing so much on the terrible things that happened that they completely miss the HUMANITY. Her mother and father weren’t mean just to be mean, they just didn’t know how to love; hurt people hurt people. Even though she is barely literate, Precious has an admirable sense of self; writing is how she expresses her life, without being judged. As a writer myself, I know how it feels to have absolutely no one except your notebook. When you’re that alone, your notebook IS a person. How can we be so stuck on the terrible things in this movie that we can’t even celebrate the amazing growth, the perseverance, the audacity to not become a victim of her environment? Precious is the girl I hope to be. Even in the worst of the worst of the worst of situations, she chooses to live, not just to survive, but to thrive. A bad situation stays a bad situation unless your mindset changes to see that it’s just a situation, situations don’t last forever. We can make it out of the darkness.
I’m so glad you talked about how this story defies the poisonous idea that all need to do is take “personal responsibility” and make “better choices.” The choices people have are not a product of their making but are presented to them by society (why is a 12 year old in Indonesia’s choices to work in a sweatshop or be sold as a sex slave and George Bush’s choices were to go to Yale or some other Ivy League – these choices were historically shaped and socially conditioned). I also appreciate @CLoren’s comments about the strength and humanity of Precious – this, to me, was one of the most important things about the film.
An article in Revolution Newspaper (which I posted in a comment on a different article too), made this point: “These are people that rarely fill the movie screen, people living in the bottommost part of our society—”fat Black girls” and “welfare mothers” who are usually only ever blamed, hated or looked down on, if looked at at all—but they are full humans, and here, portrayed as such.”
People should check out the whole piece, THE POTENTIAL OF PRECIOUS GIRLS EVERYWHERE, http://www.revcom.us/a/184/precious-en.html
I’m so glad you talked about how this story defies the poisonous idea that all need to do is take “personal responsibility” and make “better choices.” The choices people have are not a product of their making but are presented to them by society (why is a 12 year old in Indonesia’s choices to work in a sweatshop or be sold as a sex slave and George Bush’s choices were to go to Yale or some other Ivy League – these choices were historically shaped and socially conditioned). I also appreciate @CLoren’s comments about the strength and humanity of Precious – this, to me, was one of the most important things about the film.
An article in Revolution Newspaper (which I posted in a comment on a different article too), made this point: “These are people that rarely fill the movie screen, people living in the bottommost part of our society—”fat Black girls” and “welfare mothers” who are usually only ever blamed, hated or looked down on, if looked at at all—but they are full humans, and here, portrayed as such.”
People should check out the whole piece, THE POTENTIAL OF PRECIOUS GIRLS EVERYWHERE, http://www.revcom.us/a/184/precious-en.html