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Sparkle (1)
I first became aware of the buzz about Sapphire's debut novel Push in 1995 or 1996. The novel gained attention for its distressing storyline but possibly more because the novelist received a $500,000 advance, a sum unheard of in those days for a first novel. Well, unheard of except that another writer that year had received even more, Jacquelyn Mitchard.
The two women appeared on a morning news show. I think it was Good Morning America, Sapphire for Push and Mitchard for The Deep End of the Ocean, a novel also notable as the first pick for Oprah's newly-established book club. Mitchard's book terrified suburban mothers, pricking their worst fears, the disappearance of a young child. "How could she even write such horror?" people asked. That was more than a decade before incidents like that of the non-missing Balloon Boy glued some of us to our television sets.
And Push was another ghetto tale, but one about a girl, the victim of unspeakably heinous child abuse. Beatings, cruel words, incest.
So, both new novelists had hit the jackpot and both stories involved children in peril, but after that commonality, these stories diverged. Just three years later, The Deep End of the Ocean was released in theaters as a movie starring Michelle Pfieffer. It's taken 3 plus 10 years for Push to hit the screen.
The movie opened in limited release this weekend in New York, Chicago, and Atlanta. On November 20, it opens in theaters coast to coast and stars Mo'Nique and Mariah Carey, introducing Gabourey "Gabby" Sidibe as the main character, Claireece Precious Jones. The filmmaker behind the movie is Lee Daniels.
I probably remember when Deep End of the Ocean entered bookstores because of the publicity over Oprah starting a book club, and I bought the book. However, I don't remember when Push landed on bookshelves that same year. Even if I'd noticed its arrival, I'm not sure I would have read Push back then. I was married and living in the suburbs, a relatively young mother with my own teen daughter and a six-year-old son. I avoided gritty urban realism whenever possible and had been comfortably doing so for at least five years before Sapphire sold Push.
Did I see Boyz in the Hood, 1991? Despite the talk about its greatness, no. I'd heard it was phenomenal, realistic, that it told the truth about "the struggle," caused people to weep for our black boys and curse at the screen, and that's exactly why I skipped that movie. I didn't want to see misery.
And so, hearing that Push is about an obese, dark-skinned African-American teen coming of age in Harlem who is physically, emotionally, and sexually abused by not only her father but also her mother; learning that the character at 12 goes into labor on the kitchen floor, pregnant with her own father's child, while her mother kicks her and calls her names and that her the baby has Down Syndrome, a term Precious mispronounces as Down Sinder; hearing that this baby is only the first, that this 12-year-old has a healthy child four years later at 16 also by her father, and that she is nearly illiterate despite sitting in schools for 10 years, I was disinclined to read Push.
Or, as I might say if I talked more like Precious, F**k that! Who wants to read that sh*t and trap pictures in they head of m*therf**krs f**king they own children? F**k that b*tch Sapphire too. I'm not g'on read that, don't care how good she with words and money she make. That sh*t's nasty. NASTY.
Or as another character in the book, Jermaine, a young lesbian actually writes, "I'm with Rita, on that some things don't need to be written about." And then she gives the narrowest glimpse of what it felt like to be beaten and most likely raped by six men, but nothing she tells her readers is as horrible as what happened to Precious for the first 16 years of her life.
The novel Push is humanity stripped down to its worst moments flashing you behind locked doors its misused genitalia. It is also humanity lifted to its best moments of perseverance, hope, and faith. Some stories must be written and should be read.
But reading Push made me wish I could un-remember what I'd read. Reading Push made me scream at no one in particular while
