Push

I enjoyed reading Sapphire's Push because it offered a unique perspective on a very specific type of pain. Pain had a lifelong presence in Precious' life, and overcoming obstacles and taking difficult but necessary actions to overcome that was a turning point for her. Sapphire goes into great detail and makes her readers uncomfortable in general when descibing the pain, but that is what made the book so powerful. The way the book was written, with the language and crudeness that a person in Precious' position uses, makes the pain seem real and relates to the audience just how a person like this, who most of society would turn their noses at, deals with emotions and deals with people who make her feel threatened. It also relates how having support and love can lessen the burden of painful experiences and even turn a person's life around. I particularly loved how, at the end of the book, we the readers learn about the pain in the lives of those around Precious. Throughout, we see those characters merely as support for Precious and as understanding and helpful human beings. When we learn what each of them has gone through to get to where they are in their lives, it becomes even more obvious that overcoming pain and sharing those stories is crucial to being able to relate to and help those around you. The novel illustrates many examples of the Wounded Storyteller, both throughout Precious' experiences and in the short essays describing the hardships of the other students. Rain, though we don't learn her entire story, is the only sympathetic character that we don't fully understand. Her actions indicate that she has the capacity not only to feel and understand pain, but also to reach out to others in pain, which is a remarkable characteristic. In the end what I really took away from the story is that having love, both in the instances of Precious' friends and her own love for her son, is the way to recover from pain, no matter how embedded it may be in your life.