45 pages • 1 hour read
SapphirePush
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1996A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
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Symbols & Motifs
Precious’s Journal
On the way to her first day of class, Precious loses the notebook that she was instructed to bring while stealing food from a chicken restaurant. The journal represents her personal growth and academic progress. On that first day, it is empty and represents her hopefulness as a blank slate ready to learn. Her need to eat and survive nearly derails her, but the notebook comes back to her when Jo Ann finds it in the chicken restaurant and brings it to class. When Ms. Rain tells the students that they will write in their journals every day, Precious and her classmates find this daunting. They wonder how they are supposed to write anything when they don’t know how. At first, Precious writes tentative notes back and forth with Ms. Rain, but over time, writing in the journal becomes integral to Precious’s life.
Throughout her life, those who had power over Precious have written files about her. These files upset her because they contain secret information about her, and even if she could see the words, she couldn’t read them. She wonders what kind of information they might have about her and what intimate knowledge that strangers might know about her life. The novel, told from Precious’s perspective, is a sort of contrasting “file” that counters those of social workers and school administrators, which have been conglomerations of judgmental observations: narratives of her life from the point of view of people who don’t understand her trauma. Precious’s journal and narrative prioritize her own perspective and voice. They allow Precious to express herself in her own unique writing style.
Posters of Black Icons
At the beginning of the novel, Precious has a poster of Louis Farrakhan in her bedroom and sees him as the only real man who exists. Farrakhan is the leader of the Nation of Islam, a Black religious movement that incorporates the Islamic faith and Black nationalism. His association with Black pride makes him an icon to Precious, who has internalized the idea that something is wrong with her and she wouldn’t be victimized if she were white or lighter-skinned. Precious has no other real Black role models; in particular, she has no Black women to look up to either in her life or in history. Her mother has served as the opposite of a role model—an image of who she doesn’t want to become—and the authority figures around her are white. Ms. Rain becomes the first Black woman Precious can model herself on: She is tough, nurturing, and intelligent.
Criticizing Farrakhan as intolerant toward gay people and antisemitic, Ms. Rain also introduces Precious to other Black women icons. The first is Harriet Tubman, whom Precious doesn’t know about when she hangs a poster of her next to Farrakhan. Precious is amazed to learn about Harriet Tubman leading slaves to freedom through the Underground Railroad, and as she learns to read, she is proud to have two books about Tubman on her shelf. Learning about Tubman is Precious’s first stop on her own personal railroad out of the darkness of ignorance, illiteracy, and abuse and into the light of self-expression and self-sufficiency. After she reads The Color Purple with Ms. Rains and the class, Precious also hangs a poster of author Alice Walker on her wall. Precious sees herself in the protagonist of the novel, Celie, and although Ms. Rains criticizes the novel for its unrealistic happy ending, Precious finds strength and joy from reading about a Black woman who endures the same trauma and abuse she herself has but triumphs over it.
Although Precious doesn’t ultimately get the same happy ending as Celie, she finds her own way and success in life. The last addition to Precious’s wall is her own literacy award, of which she says, “That is good proof to me that I can do anything” (88). Learning to read well enough to win an award is a massive achievement for Precious. It shows growth and progress in her life and education. When she adds it to the wall, Precious joins her Black role models and becomes her own Black icon as well. She starts to see herself as a poet when she couldn’t write before. As inspired as Precious is by Celie’s strength, she demonstrates even greater strength by pushing herself forward even after she learns that she will not have her own happy ending.
Precious’s Body
Push centers on vulnerable women and girls who wear their abuse in their bodies as they fight and push to rise above their trauma. Precious’s narrative frequently focuses on her body as a site of her trauma. Her father began violating the privacy and sanctity of her body before she was old enough to remember it. Precious’s body has absorbed the pain and trauma of childbirth, bearing stretch marks from her pregnancies. When she went into labor with her first child, Mary beat her, punishing Precious’s body further. After giving birth, Precious is hyperaware of an intimate type of pain that a young girl would not usually experience.
Precious wishes constantly that her body were different. She imagines that if she were thin, light-skinned or white, and more conventionally beautiful, then her parents would have valued rather than abused her. Precious eats to numb the pain, and her size becomes armor as she uses her body to intimidate bullies and even teachers at school. At the same time, she disassociates from her body. She pretends that she isn’t pregnant and avoids prenatal care. She visualizes her large Black body as only a shell surrounding the real Precious, whom she sees as white and blue-eyed. She refuses the knowledge of her weight, choosing to remain in the dark beyond the 200-pound limit of the household scale. When Precious dreams of a better life for herself, she dreams of losing weight. However, to cope with her trauma, Precious must connect with her body and her Blackness.
Part of Precious’s hatred of her own body comes from her hatred of her mother’s body. Her first memory of her mother is one of being sexually assaulted, and her mother’s presence repulses her because she recognizes Mary’s smell as the odor of her genitals. She sees her mother’s body as oppressive, filling the room and making it difficult to breathe. Precious dreams about her mother choking her younger self between her legs, and she fears gaining weight and becoming like her. However, when Mary informs Precious of Carl’s death, it is apparent how much Precious has grown and become different from her mother. Through education and healing, Precious addresses rather than denies the risk that HIV presents to her body as well as Abdul’s. By contrast, Mary chooses to remain in ignorance. At the end of the book, Precious comes to terms with her own mortality and accepts it, opting to make the most of the time she has before her body gives out.
