Push

“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 voice was so different from any other man in her life that he was miraculous to her. Her remarks about his skin color and “good”—i.e., relatively straight—hair also reveal the influence of internalized racism, as Precious views them as superior to her own Blackness.

“But they ain’ nice men. They pigs. I ain’ crazy. I don’t tell them nothing.”

After having her first baby, Precious gave the police very little information about the incestuous rape and abuse that caused the pregnancy. Later, she wonders if it is her fault that Carl never went to prison. However, her mistrust of the police and government-run systems is deeply ingrained and based on her own experiences as well as the experiences of other Black people around her. Regardless of what else she said or did, a pregnant 12-year-old should have been removed from her home as soon as she identified her father as the baby’s father, but the police don’t press any further after Precious reveals herself to be reluctant to speak. They treat her as if she is an adult with the ability to give consent rather than a child who needs help.

“I big, I talk, I eats, I cooks, I laugh, watch TV, do what my muver say. But I can see when the picture come back I don’t exist. Don’t nobody want me. Don’t nobody need me. I know who I am. I know who they say I am—vampire sucking the system’s blood. Ugly black grease to be wipe away, punish, kilt, changed, finded a job for.”

Precious feels invisible no matter how conspicuous she makes herself as a person. She sees her mother living on welfare, which she knows those who are more privileged view with contempt. No one expects Precious to be different, so they see her as a future burden on society. Since Precious is becoming educated and improving her life while raising a child as a minor herself, she needs the welfare system to support her so she can continue. However, even after winning an award for her progress, Ms. Weiss is still contemptuous of Precious’s need for continued help, deeming her to be unworthy of the effort and resources.

“My fahver don’t see me really. If he did he would know I was like a white girl, a real person, inside. He would not climb on me from forever and stick his dick in me ‘n get me inside on fire, bleed, I bleed then he slap me. Can’t he see I am a girl for flowers and thin straw legs and a place in the picture.”

Later in the novel, Precious is shocked to discover that there are pretty white girls and women from rich families in the support group who have also experienced incestuous sexual abuse. Throughout her life, she has internalized that her Black body isn’t worthy of respect or human dignity. In order to see herself as a special and valuable person, she imagines that her soul or personhood is white and thin, hidden within her body.

“Principal call Mama and who else I don’t remember. Finally Principal say, Let it be. Be glad thas all the trouble she give you. Focus on the ones who can learn. Principal say to teacher. What that mean? Is she one of the ones who can’t?”

Precious’s teachers in public school wrote her off at an early age. In second grade, traumatized by abuse at home, Precious started to sit silently and urinate in her clothes while in class. Instead of investigating or sending her to a child psychologist, the principal decided that she was hopeless. For the rest of her years in the school system, her teachers ignored her and “focus[ed] on the ones who [could] learn” without recognizing that with some help Precious could learn too.

“I look at her weird. Ain’ she spozed to know what we gonna do. How we gonna figure anything out. Weze ignerent. We here to learn, leas’ I am. God I hope this don’t be another… another… I don’t know—another like before, yeah another like the years before.”

As Precious states in Chapter 1, she has been waiting for a teacher to take an interest in her and help her unlock her brain. Now that she is in the alternative class, she has a moment of panic when Ms. Rain suggests that they need to figure out how to run the class. She has always been left to her own devices in school, and she knows that she needs guidance. Precious is relieved to discover that Ms. Rain is particularly talented at guiding students into becoming self-sufficient.

“She ain’ come in here and say, Carl Kenwood Jones—thas wrong! Git off Precious like that! Can’t you see Precious is a beautiful chile like white chile in magazines or on toilet paper wrappers. Precious is a blue-eye skinny child whose hair is long braids, long long braids. Git off Precious, fool! It time for Precious to go to the gym like Janet Jackson. It time for Precious hair to be braided.”

When Carl rapes Precious, her mother allows it to happen. Precious is certain that such ugly things don’t happen to beautiful white girls, and that if only she were pretty and light-skinned, her mother would have intervened. Certainly, abuse happens to all different types of people, but Precious recognizes that she has been ignored by a racist society that doesn’t see her as a valuable person worthy of protection. At the same time, she herself has absorbed society’s racism, framing her demand for respect in terms of being “like white chile” rather than in terms of simply being human.

“My name mean somethin’ valuable—Precious. Claireece, that somebody else’s name. I don’t know where my muver get that shit from.”

Precious rejects the first name that her mother gave her because she is fixated on the idea of her worth as a person. Her middle name, “Precious,” is ironic because no one in her life, including her parents, has treated her as a precious child. No one around her sees or values her. However, her name is meaningful because Precious asserts that she is in fact a precious and worthy person inside, even if people dismiss her because of her skin color and appearance.

“My baby is pretty baby. I don’t not love him. He is a rapist’s baby. But that’s OK, Miz Rain say we is a nation of raped children, that the black man in America today is the product of rape.”

Precious accepts unquestioningly that she will raise Abdul because it was instilled in her from an early age that abortion or giving a baby up are not acceptable. Since Precious is determined to keep Abdul, Ms. Rain helps her to view and accept him as a normal child. The history of Blackness in the United States rises out of violent oppression. Slave holders frequently raped and impregnated Black women, infiltrating Black familial lines with the paternity of rapists. Ms. Rain therefore suggests that Abdul is as worthwhile as any Black man, regardless of his origins.

“I don’t know what ‘realism’ mean but I do know what REALITY is and it’s a mutherfucker, lemme tell you.”

When the class reads The Color Purple, Ms. Rain says that critics have argued that the book’s ending isn’t realistic enough, noting that realism can be a good thing. However, Precious loves the ending on a visceral level because she wants such a happy ending to be possible. Despite Precious’s exceedingly difficult life, she still hangs on to hope and optimism.

“She asks people at the place just what a 1/2way house is. They tell her, You is 1/2way between the life you had and the life you want to have. Ain’t that nice.”

Precious has aspirations for her future, and living at the halfway house while attending school is allowing her to pursue those aspirations for the first time in her life. Before, she worried that her life was on a dead-end track, and given her limited opportunities, it likely was. She sees the halfway house as a stopping point on the way to a better life. Precious plans to push herself as far as she can.

“Mama look bad, don’t have to get close to know she smell bad. But then I look Mama and see my face, my body, my color—we bofe big, dark. Am I ugly? Is Mama ugly? I’m not sure.”

When Precious sees her mother again, it reminds her of the way her mother’s body makes her feel about her own. However, even as she compares herself to her mother, she questions whether they have beauty instead of being certain that they don’t—a sign of the confidence Precious has gained since leaving home.

“Where my Color Purple? Where my god most high? Where my king? Where my black love? Where my man love? Woman love? Any kinda love? Why me? I don’t deserve this. I not crack addict. Why I get Mama for a mama? Why I not born a light-skin dream?”

After learning that Carl has died of AIDS, Precious revisits the ending of The Color Purple. She even asks her mother if Carl might not really be her father (as Celie discovers of her rapist father in the novel). Earlier, when Ms. Rain commented on the lack of realism in the book, Precious was adamant that the ending was possible. Now, however, she questions why her life isn’t working out happily like Celie’s. The book gave her hope but didn’t prepare her for the possibility that sometimes things get worse for people who don’t deserve to be punished.

“Is life a hammer to beat me down?”

Throughout her life, Precious deals with horrific ugliness and fantasizes about a happier existence. She constantly fights for herself, even when she isn’t sure how to fight. However, when she learns that she has HIV, Precious feels powerless. She is lost in despair because she now knows how her life will likely end. For Precious, life has been a constant hammer beating her down, but she hasn’t seen it that way until she hits an obstacle that she cannot fight.

“Ms Rain say, You not writing Precious. I say I drownin’ in river. She don’t look me like I’m crazy but say, If you just sit there the river gonna rise up drown you! Writing could be the boat carry you to the other side.”

Ms. Rain pushes her students to be persistent and keep writing, but once Precious is diagnosed with HIV, the unfairness and futility of bettering herself overwhelm her. Ms. Rain’s advice seems trite to Precious in the moment, but writing does become her lifeboat. Learning to express herself in poetry and examine her thoughts and feelings in writing is how Precious works her way across the despair she is drowning in.

“Rita say, All people with HIV or AIDS is innocent victims; it’s a disease, not a ‘good,’ a ‘bad.’ You know what she mean? Well thas good ‘cause I don’t.”

AIDS was originally called GRID, or “Gay-Related Immuno-Deficiency,” and was heavily stigmatized. Precious, like many people have, sees AIDS as a moral judgement and doesn’t understand why it has been inflicted on her; she has only recently come to grips with the idea that she bore no responsibility for the sexual abuse she experienced, and now she has a diagnosis that seems to negate that realization. However, Rita understands that the stigma is socially constructed and reflects prejudice—against gay men, people with a substance use disorder, immigrants, etc. In the end, AIDS is no different than other diseases in that it is indiscriminate and has no moral implications.

“Ms Rain say don’t always rhyme, stretch for words to fall like drops of rain, snowflakes—did you know no two snowflakes is alike? Have you ever seen a snowflake? I haven’t! All I seen is gobs of dirty gray shit. You mean to tell me that nasty stuff is made of snowy flakes. I don’t believe it.”

Ms. Rain teaches Precious that her voice is unique and that it doesn’t matter if the way she writes conforms to common literary standards. Precious, though, has never seen herself as special or unique outside of her fantasies. She doesn’t fully believe that something beautiful could arise out of dirt and ugliness, drawing an implicit parallel between the snowfall and herself.

“I have never really had nothing tested. Glasses is what I really want so my eyes not get so tired at night when I be reading. But you can’t get all hung up on details when you trying to survive.”

Ms. Rain suggests that Precious ought to have her hearing tested, as hearing loss might explain some of her learning difficulties throughout her life. Precious’s reaction demonstrates how the abuse she grew up with has affected all areas of her existence. No one cared enough to check her ears and eyes, and the fact that she knows that she needs reading glasses suggests that Precious’s vision might have hampered her education as well. As a child, Precious had to focus on survival, not thriving.

“I don’t want to cry. I tell myself I WILL NOT CRY when I am writing, ‘cause number one I stop writing and number two I just don’t always want to be crying like white bitch on TV movies. Since I ain’ no white bitch. I understand that now.”

Precious has trouble writing about her life experiences without being overcome with tears and emotion. She is determined to avoid vulnerability and sees crying as something that self-indulgent white women do in maudlin movies on television. She is starting to see herself as a Black woman inside and out instead of telling herself that she has an inner white woman who deserves kindness and consideration.

“This whose ass they want me to wipe? Push wheelchair for—I kill ‘em first. TYGER TYGER BURNING BRIGHT. That’s what in Precious Jones heart—a tyger.”

The social worker, Ms. Weiss, writes that Precious should quit school and be a homecare worker instead of trying to go to college. However, Precious is still strong and fighting for herself. She isn’t willing to put herself in a position where she feels subservient to rich white people, and she repurposes a piece of the Western literary canon—William Blake's “The Tyger”—to describe her own strength and determination.

“Ms Rain say journal completely confidential. Share if you want. If you don’t want to, don’t. I don’t want to.”

The journal that Precious begins for class turns out to be an extension of herself. She uses it to lay out her thoughts and feelings. Her life has been marred by violation of her privacy and ownership of her own body. By asserting her right to control who sees her written inner thoughts, Precious is taking ownership of her mind.

“I love to hold him on my lap, open up the world to him.”

As Precious learns and improves her reading and writing, she teaches her son Abdul to read as well. Reading opened up Precious’s world. Education allows her to pass this legacy on to her son and give him the same advantages that she might have had if she had learned to read early in life.