Push to Precious

I don't know if any of you reading this have seen Precious but if you have not, you should. Great movie that does the book's justice.

For those of you who have not even heard of the book Push now a movie named Precious...you must be living under a rock. But I am going to tell you about it anyway.

Push is about a young girl named Clarice Precious Jones who has been abused, mistreated and raped countless time by the two people in the world who are suppose to love and appreciate her: her parents. At sixteen and pregnant with her second child by her father, Precious is kicked out of her middle school and is enrolled in an alternative high school where she is taught to read and write in order to pass her GED exam. In her class she gets the support, love, and encouragement from her classmates and teacher that gives her the courage to leave her abusive home with her children and abandon her mother forever.

After everything I have told you about street literature and the examples that I have given and the brief summary I just gave you about Push, do you think this is a street novel? With all that I know about street novels I am on the fence about this book because it is not similar to all the street novels I have read. In the street novels I have read women who were victims of rape and abuse used the sensuality to get what they wanted and in most cases had their plans backfire on them. Young men turned drug-dealers would start off wanting to make some extra money would later let the money make them. A crime would take place in the beginning and the story trails the protagonist as they go about coping with what has happened. One key thing that I have noticed in street fiction, the characters may have dreams but instead of striving towards them, they settle for less.

In Push do you think that it is a street novel just because it is set in an urban setting and it consists of issues such as poverty, rape, teen mother which are some elements of street fiction or is it a drama set in an urban neighborhood with issues that plagues us all not just African Americans in urban areas? Maybe so maybe not.

I am going to leave you guys with a question. You ready?<-- That wasn't it. Do you think there is a line that a novel like Push must cross to be considered a street novel such as Pain Freak?

VERDICT: DEFINITELY A BOOK WORTH READING AND APPROPRIATE FOR READING IN CLASSES