Push [Taschenbuch]

Claireece Precious Jones endures unimaginable hardships in her young life. Abused by her mother, raped by her father, she grows up poor, angry, illiterate, fat, unloved and generally unnoticed. So what better way to learn about her than through her own, halting dialect. That is the device deployed in the first novel by poet and singer Sapphire. "Sometimes I wish I was not alive," Precious says. "But I don't know how to die. Ain' no plug to pull out. 'N no matter how bad I feel my heart don't stop beating and my eyes open in the morning." An intense story of adversity and the mechanisms to cope with it. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

Sapphire returns to the themes of incest and child abuse that were a part of her daring American Dreams (1984) but with a starkness that is truly horrifying and unforgettable, perhaps because of the horror. Precious Jones lives in a world worse than the one inhabited by the character Celie in The Color Purple. She, too, is a victim of abuse. At 16, Precious finds herself pregnant again by her father, untrained, uneducated, and unable to care for herself or her baby. She is astute enough to know that there is a better way to live but is clueless as to how to get there. Fortunately for Precious, she meets a black teacher, Ms. Blue Rain, who pushes her to change with encouragement and inspiration. Ms. Rain challenges Precious to learn to read and write and improve her way of life. In her literacy class, Miss Rain instructs all of her students to maintain a journal; readers experience Precious' transformation in her journal entries. Her development and growth are astonishing in the short period of time we share her writings. Push is an intense work, both heartbreaking and frightening. The work is slated for a 150,000-copy first printing, excerpted in the New Yorker, and will also be published in England, France, Germany, and other countries. Lillian Lewis -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

Poet Sapphire's slim first novel draws on her experience as a performance artist and literacy teacher: She tells her sad but sentimentally uplifting story in the voice of a 17-year-old illiterate from Harlem, and the result is more sociological (in the Ricki Lake mold) than literary. Clareece Precious Jones is a study in abuse. Continually raped by her father since the age of five, she's now pregnant for the second time with his baby, the first having been born with Down's syndrome when Precious was 12. Meantime, her mother is no help, calling the overweight girl a ``fat cunt bucket slut,'' beating her at will, and satisfying her own bizarre sexual needs from her daughter. Schools have also all failed her; teachers find her ``uncooperative,'' and she considers her last a ``retarded hoe.'' Finally, Precious enrolls in a Harlem alternative school where she begins the tough climb out of illiteracy. No longer dreaming impossible ideas about rappers and movie star fame, she joins six others in a basic-skills class run by Blue Rain, a self-proclaimed lesbian who isn't afraid to editorialize in class. In short order, Precious discovers the joys of the alphabet and journal-writing, the pleasures of owning books and composing poetry. Although she raises herself to a seventh-grade level by narrative's end, she also finds out she's HIV positive. All of this is transcribed in a phonetic spelling that's supposed to reflect Precious's actual abilities, but seems condescending--and woefully unauthentic--since Sapphire often loses control of the voice. The homage to The Color Purple (``One thing I say about Farrakhan and Alice Walker they help me like being black'') highlights Sapphire's commercial aspirations, as well as, by contrast, her technical inadequacies. A maudlin (at times pornographic) advertisement for the power of literacy and the value of recovery groups. (First printing of 150,000) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

It does not get much worse than 16-year-old Precious Johnson's life. Illiterate, physically and sexually abused by both parents, and impregnated for the second time by her father?her first child has Down syndrome?she is outraged when she is suspended from her Harlem middle school. It is this suspension, however, that offers hope as Precious enrolls in an alternative program, learns to read and write, and begins a journal that both chronicles her disturbing life and becomes her outlet against the brutality and confusion she endures. The language is raw, and the situations are graphic enough to elicit an occasional cringe on the listener's part. Precious's story rings so true and Sapphire's reading is so realistic that listeners are compelled to persevere to the end. Highly recommended.?Susan McCaffrey, Sturgis Pub. Sch. Lib., Mich.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Hörkassette .

Lenox Avenue, Harlem: das 'Reich der Stimmlosen'. Hier, in einem Abbruchhaus, lebt Precious Jones, sechzehn und schon zum zweitenmal von ihrem eigenen Vater schwanger. Ihre eifersüchtige, gewalttätige Mutter prügelt ihr jedes Gefühl aus außer dem Selbsthaß. Sie ist schwarz, übergewichtig, Analphabetin, kaum der Sprache mächtig. Sie weiß nichts von der Welt, und die Welt verschließt die Augen vor ihr.
Und doch gibt es, wie durch ein Wunder, Hoffnung für Precious. Als ihr die mutige, entschlossene Lehrerin Blue Rain mit viel Liebe, List und Überredungskunst das Lesen beibringt, öffnet sich für sie langsam eine Pforte zur Welt. Sie lernt, daß sie Gefühle hat und Träume - und eine machtvolle innere Stimme, die ihr die ungeschminkte Wahrheit über ihr Leben sagt.