A Reading of Push by Sapphire

Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire was a startling movie that was as emotional as it was bleak. The acting was better than the story itself, which was so real and raw that it ended on a note of doom (Precious has AIDS, what else can happen to her besides dying, thereby leaving her children without a caregiver). I just read Push by Sapphire to see how it differed from the movie itself.

Push is, surprisingly, more dark and depressing than the movie itself. Mary, the mother, was understandable in the movie, but in the book she herself rapes her daughter. Precious' first memory is of her mother fingering her. The movie subtly alluded to sexual interactions between Precious and her mother, but the book was explicit. Some of Mary's best lines in the movie were expansions on more brief lines from the book. The other students at Each One Teach One were slightly more developed than in the movie, but I think they transition well to the screen. Blue Rain was more one dimensional in the book, and I was glad they added a scene of her home life in the movie to juxtapose her normalcy with Precious' abnormality. Ms Weiss is less well intentioned in the book than in the movie, and her scenes are only in the last third of the book. Precious herself is about the same, though her life is more tortured (can you believe it?) in the book, as her mother rapes her. She never does get her daughter Mongo back, as opposed to the film.

I prefer the film: even though Precious' life was unbearable in the film, it was worse in the book. It was too much to take at moments, such as when she smears her own shit on her face after being raped by her father. Her inner acceptance of being black, however, was better developed in the book, but the montage of Precious in the classroom surrounded by famous African Americans conveyed this in the film. The part that really struck me was on page 133 when she realizes that God is everywhere, including in her son Abdul, which reminded me of The Road. The writing style of Sapphire was meant to show how Precious thought and wrote, and at times it was difficult to decipher what she was saying, but at other times the vocabulary was too advanced to be believable for Precious.

Overall, the book was a brief look at the horrors of urban poverty, abuse, and teenage motherhood in Harlem. I'd recommend both the film and the book, but watch the movie first. The movie and the book end with the same uncertainty but also a sense of despair, as the AIDS virus looms over the future.