Push

Push by Sapphire tells the story of an African American girl's life in Harlem during the 1970's. It explains the hard life of a girl who has been abused all of her life and has a love for learning. When I came across this book, my seventh grade teacher told me about it. I read it, but didn't quite finish it. This year, I decided that I wanted to completely finish the book and see how different it was from the movie.

The book is told in the point of view of sixteen year old Precious Jones. She has been physically abused all of her life by her mother and sexually abused by her father. Precious even had two children, thanks to her father's abuse. One day in school, she found out that she was being suspended for her pregnancy. Her counselor suggested to tell Precious about the alternative school called Each One Teach One. Precious wanted to learn, so she decided to go to the school. Although, her mother was very discouraging of the idea, as she was for every idea Precious had. That didn't stop her though; Precious decided to go. As the story progresses, she finds herself surrounded by new friends and learns new things, thanks to her teacher, Ms. Rain.

There are a lot of things I liked about the book! However, one of the things I didn't like about it is that there were a lot of grammar and spelling mistakes. Even though I know that Precious wrote like that and that her knowledge of English - along with everything else - was limited, it still bothered me a little. I don't know if it was because I was a grammar freak or something. I liked that it went into great detail about what Precious was going through! Well, except for some of them, I felt that they went into too much detail. It kind of made me feel uncomfortable. Except for that, it was a great read! I love the story and it was definitely life changing. I recommend it for everyone who just likes to read those kind of life changing stories. However, the story does have swearing and detail about some things that people will be uncomfortable reading. Other than that, it was amazing!