What an amazing book. Push by Sapphire tells the heartbreaking and inspiring story of  Claireece Precious Jones. This novel is told from the point of view of Precious who is an illiterate Harlem teenager. This book really makes you appreciate what you have in life.

            Precious begins writing her story when she is sixteen. The book starts with Precious telling about when she was twelve, and already pregnant with her first child by her father. She loves school even though she is illiterate. In math class, she never opens her book because all the pages look the same but she will not tell anyone this.

            After Precious has her first baby on the floor of her home she leaves school for a year. This baby has Down syndrome. When she returns to school, she again becomes pregnant by her father. When the school finds out she is pregnant they expel her. Eager to learn, Precious attends Each One, Teach One, an alternative school located in Hotel Theresa. This is when her life slowly begins to get better. Here Precious meets Mrs. Rain. Mrs. Rain believes in Precious and is pretty much the only person who cares about Precious. While attending Each One, Teach One precious has her second baby. Soon after, she leaves her home and stays in a half way house. She then finds out via her mother that her father had the AIDs virus and died. After being tested, she discovers that she also has the AIDs virus, but her baby does not. Precious is determined not to let her baby grow up illiterate. She reads to him and teaches him the alphabet.

From this point on Precious’s life begins to get better. She meets with her mother and gets counseling about incest. Towards the end of the book Precious is almost able to enter the GED class.

Precious has dealt with more hardships in her short life than several people should have to endure over a lifetime. At first, the book was a little difficult to read with all of the misspellings and incorrect word usage, but after the first few pages, I became accustomed to it. The way the book was written with these mistakes really adds to the experience of the book. If these mistakes had not been included in the book it would have taken away from the power the book has to inflict emotion on the reader.

The details given about Precious’s home life are very disturbing. I cannot begin to feel her pain or imagine what it is like to be raped by a family member at such a young age. This book is able to inflict anger, sadness, hope, and frustration all within a few pages of each other. Anger because of the way she is treated. Sadness because she has nowhere to go. Hope because she has a chance at a better life. Frustration because of the way the education system treats her.

This book really puts a spotlight on the problems with the education system in America. Students are sometimes forgotten about and just passed form one grade to the next without the necessary skills. Perhaps if Precious had not been forgotten about in the school system she could have had a better life.

            This is a very emotional book. Anyone who reads this book will walk away with a feeling of gratitude for what they have in life. No one should ever have to deal with the pain and hardships that Precious has had to deal with. After reading this book, I defiantly have a different outlook on life and would recommend this book to a friend.