Push

“Sure you can do anything when you talking or writing, it’s not like living when you can only do what you doing. Some people tell a story ‘n it don’t make sense or be true. But I’m gonna try to make sense and tell the truth, else what’s the fucking use? Ain’ enough lies and shit out there already?”

Readers may find this statement ironic because Precious’s story is fictional. However, it is also more than fiction. The novel addresses uncomfortable realities of abuse, incest, rape, racism, and the failings of the public education and social services systems. Precious may be fictional, but girls with her experiences certainly exist, as do the problems raised in the novel.

“Everyday I tell myself something gonna happen, some shit like on TV. I’m gonna break through or somebody gonna break through to me—I’m gonna learn, catch up, be normal, change my seat to the front of the class. But again, it has not been that day.”

As a sophomore in high school, Precious has not yet learned to read. She, like many real-life students, has slipped through the cracks of the educational system. Precious likes to imagine living her life as a movie or television character. On the screen, the brilliant teacher saves the wayward student, and Precious is waiting for this to happen. In reality, these fantasies are just a coping mechanism Precious uses to distance herself from her bleak reality; to learn, she ends up having to seek out help herself and fight for her own education.

“And always after that I look for someone with his face and eyes in Spanish peoples. He coffee-cream color, good hair. I remember that. God. I think he was god.”

Before she goes to Each One Teach One, Precious experiences very little kindness in her life, and all of it comes from strangers. When she went into labor at the age of 12, her mother responded with violence. The EMT who spoke kindly to her and urged her to push was simply good at his job, but to Precious, this attractive man with a gentle, supportive