Black People : Precious!!

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1285/is_n6_v26/ai_18450196/


Sapphire's big push
Interview, June, 1996
by Mark Marvel

MARK MARVEL: Why did you choose the word push for the title of your book?

SAPPHIRE: In the beginning of the book there's the scene where [twelve-year-old] Precious is giving birth. I was trying to get across that very basic, primal female energy of bringing forth life. There is something very aggressive and assertive about being a female. We're taught to be very laid-back and passive, but if we're to survive, if we're to move forward, we have to have that pushing energy.

MM: I'm also curious about your own name.

S: Well, my given name was Ramona, and I just didn't have any use for it. I took the name Sapphire at the height of the New Age movement, when everybody was a gemstone. [laughs] At one time in African-American culture, the name also had a very negative connotation. Sapphire was, like, the evil, razor-toting type of belligerent black woman, which was somehow attractive to me, especially because my mother was just the opposite. And I could picture the name on books; I couldn't see "Push, by Ramona." [laughs]

MM: You make several references to Alice Walker's book The Color Purple. She obviously had a big influence on you.

S: I wanted to let this whole new generation who's gonna read Push know that it was born out of The Color Purple and the other books I mention. I don't think I could have written Push if Alice Walker had not written The Color Purple, or if Toni Morrison had not written The Bluest Eyes. They kicked open the door. The content of Push may not be so problematic now, but can you imagine what it would be like if nothing had come before it?


MM: Can you describe that content?

S: Precious Jones, the protagonist, has been raped by her father since she was seven years old. She's also been abused and battered by her mother, horribly. In addition, she's slipped through all the crocks in the educational system. So at sixteen, when the novel begins, she's still in junior high, unable to read and write, and pregnant with her father's child. She wants to stay in school just in the hope of someday getting to be a part of something, but they kick her out because she's pregnant. And then she goes to an alternative school, where she's allowed to have her innocence back. And these older women and fellow outcasts who are in the class embrace her. So she goes from being this object of ridicule and abuse to being like the baby.

MM: Precious is described as "immense" and "unattractive." What did her appearance represent to you?

S: I really did not want a character who was going to be saved by romantic love. And this isolation makes her the perfect vehicle for Miss Rain, her teacher at the alternative school, to work on.

MM: Miss Rain is really the first person who tries to help. She's the one who gets Precious thinking for herself. She teaches her how to read and write, which is how Precious finally communicates what her father has done to her. But the more she opens up, the more Miss Rain also forces her to confront her own ignorance, such as Precious's feelings about homosexuals.

S: Yeah. Well, as a bisexual woman who has never been in the closet, it was very hard for me when I encountered homophobia, and I couldn't back away from that in my characters - it would have been a disservice to what I was trying to do not to have Precious confront her ignorance. Precious has to deal with this and somehow incorporate it into dealing with her other problems. She has to go outside of her community, to people who she's been taught are in some ways her enemies, to get the help she needs. That's why I wanted her to be so young; she has the capacity to change.

MM: At the beginning of the book, Precious idolizes the Rev. Louis Farrakhan. Miss Rain, who I sense is the character who comes closest to you, obviously feels quite differently.

S: Yes, we share [a lot of] the same experiences, and what I realized through that experience is you can't take something from people until you have something else to give them. For example, Precious needs a positive view of black men, and Miss Rain can't give her that. There's a failure in Miss Rain's ability to deliver. I mean, she's not God. You [can only] give what you can. Precious doesn't understand the ramifications of black nationalism. She doesn't know that there's something negative about Farrakhan. She doesn't know that hating gay people or hating Jews or hating foreigners is detrimental to her. What's been detrimental to her is being poor, being abused, and being illiterate.

MM: As I was reading Push, I was reminded of something James Baldwin once said, to the effect that a black person growing up in Harlem hasn't always hated white people, but just has never known who they are. Precious doesn't leave her neighborhood until she's sixteen, when she takes her first trip downtown to the incest survivors' meeting. That feeling of almost complete isolation was sort of dumbfounding to me. What was Harlem like for you?

S: I saw a complete generation grow up while I was living in Harlem. I moved into a building in '83 and moved out in '93. The children who were seven and eight when I moved in were seventeen and eighteen when I moved out. I saw girls who had their first babies at fourteen. I listened to someone I had gone over a little primer with talking about their friend who got shot. I wasn't someone who came in for a year or two and then went on. I saw the way things get repeated. But at that time I didn't have anyone to talk to [about it], you know? And I wasn't really writing about that reality then.

MM: Was Precious based on someone you knew then?

S: No. She was a composite. Although while I was teaching, I did meet a young woman who told me that she had a baby by her father when she was twelve. I thought, How do you get up from that? So that was something that just stayed with me. Then, later, she told me she had AIDS. I went into this whole thing of, "Many people have HIV, and da-da-da," and then I realized she was trying to tell me she was gonna die. She just said, "I don't have time for this. I'm not dropping out, but I don't have time to take the G.E.D. and all that." I asked her what she wanted to do. She was a brilliant poet and she said, "I wanna write." And that's when I realized she, like most of the women in that class, was never gonna be able to tell her story.

MM: Do you feel that by writing Push you were able to introduce a new voice to people?

S: You know, [for so long] there has just been this space filled by statistics and jokes, but never with a real human being. And in that way I feel I've done my work. I don't think it's a perfect book, and there are parts that I wish I had done differently. But every time I let Precious's voice come through, I just felt the rawness and the power coming from a worthy human being. To me, nothing I had ever learned made any sense unless Precious made sense. That's how I felt writing it, and that's what pushed me forward.

COPYRIGHT 1996 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
 
Why do I get the distinct feeling that besides mixing in her own agenda with a legitimate tale of pain and abuse, that Sapphire herself may have been part of that composite? What might she have failed to reveal about her own life in this interview? Thanks for sharing this information.



http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1285/is_n6_v26/ai_18450196/


Sapphire's big push
Interview, June, 1996
by Mark Marvel

MARK MARVEL: Why did you choose the word push for the title of your book?

SAPPHIRE: In the beginning of the book there's the scene where [twelve-year-old] Precious is giving birth. I was trying to get across that very basic, primal female energy of bringing forth life. There is something very aggressive and assertive about being a female. We're taught to be very laid-back and passive, but if we're to survive, if we're to move forward, we have to have that pushing energy.

MM: I'm also curious about your own name.

S: Well, my given name was Ramona, and I just didn't have any use for it. I took the name Sapphire at the height of the New Age movement, when everybody was a gemstone. [laughs] At one time in African-American culture, the name also had a very negative connotation. Sapphire was, like, the evil, razor-toting type of belligerent black woman, which was somehow attractive to me, especially because my mother was just the opposite. And I could picture the name on books; I couldn't see "Push, by Ramona." [laughs]

MM: You make several references to Alice Walker's book The Color Purple. She obviously had a big influence on you.

S: I wanted to let this whole new generation who's gonna read Push know that it was born out of The Color Purple and the other books I mention. I don't think I could have written Push if Alice Walker had not written The Color Purple, or if Toni Morrison had not written The Bluest Eyes. They kicked open the door. The content of Push may not be so problematic now, but can you imagine what it would be like if nothing had come before it?


MM: Can you describe that content?

S: Precious Jones, the protagonist, has been raped by her father since she was seven years old. She's also been abused and battered by her mother, horribly. In addition, she's slipped through all the crocks in the educational system. So at sixteen, when the novel begins, she's still in junior high, unable to read and write, and pregnant with her father's child. She wants to stay in school just in the hope of someday getting to be a part of something, but they kick her out because she's pregnant. And then she goes to an alternative school, where she's allowed to have her innocence back. And these older women and fellow outcasts who are in the class embrace her. So she goes from being this object of ridicule and abuse to being like the baby.

MM: Precious is described as "immense" and "unattractive." What did her appearance represent to you?

S: I really did not want a character who was going to be saved by romantic love. And this isolation makes her the perfect vehicle for Miss Rain, her teacher at the alternative school, to work on.

MM: Miss Rain is really the first person who tries to help. She's the one who gets Precious thinking for herself. She teaches her how to read and write, which is how Precious finally communicates what her father has done to her. But the more she opens up, the more Miss Rain also forces her to confront her own ignorance, such as Precious's feelings about homosexuals.

S: Yeah. Well, as a bisexual woman who has never been in the closet, it was very hard for me when I encountered homophobia, and I couldn't back away from that in my characters - it would have been a disservice to what I was trying to do not to have Precious confront her ignorance. Precious has to deal with this and somehow incorporate it into dealing with her other problems. She has to go outside of her community, to people who she's been taught are in some ways her enemies, to get the help she needs. That's why I wanted her to be so young; she has the capacity to change.

MM: At the beginning of the book, Precious idolizes the Rev. Louis Farrakhan. Miss Rain, who I sense is the character who comes closest to you, obviously feels quite differently.

S: Yes, we share [a lot of] the same experiences, and what I realized through that experience is you can't take something from people until you have something else to give them. For example, Precious needs a positive view of black men, and Miss Rain can't give her that. There's a failure in Miss Rain's ability to deliver. I mean, she's not God. You [can only] give what you can. Precious doesn't understand the ramifications of black nationalism. She doesn't know that there's something negative about Farrakhan. She doesn't know that hating gay people or hating Jews or hating foreigners is detrimental to her. What's been detrimental to her is being poor, being abused, and being illiterate.

MM: As I was reading Push, I was reminded of something James Baldwin once said, to the effect that a black person growing up in Harlem hasn't always hated white people, but just has never known who they are. Precious doesn't leave her neighborhood until she's sixteen, when she takes her first trip downtown to the incest survivors' meeting. That feeling of almost complete isolation was sort of dumbfounding to me. What was Harlem like for you?

S: I saw a complete generation grow up while I was living in Harlem. I moved into a building in '83 and moved out in '93. The children who were seven and eight when I moved in were seventeen and eighteen when I moved out. I saw girls who had their first babies at fourteen. I listened to someone I had gone over a little primer with talking about their friend who got shot. I wasn't someone who came in for a year or two and then went on. I saw the way things get repeated. But at that time I didn't have anyone to talk to [about it], you know? And I wasn't really writing about that reality then.

MM: Was Precious based on someone you knew then?

S: No. She was a composite. Although while I was teaching, I did meet a young woman who told me that she had a baby by her father when she was twelve. I thought, How do you get up from that? So that was something that just stayed with me. Then, later, she told me she had AIDS. I went into this whole thing of, "Many people have HIV, and da-da-da," and then I realized she was trying to tell me she was gonna die. She just said, "I don't have time for this. I'm not dropping out, but I don't have time to take the G.E.D. and all that." I asked her what she wanted to do. She was a brilliant poet and she said, "I wanna write." And that's when I realized she, like most of the women in that class, was never gonna be able to tell her story.

MM: Do you feel that by writing Push you were able to introduce a new voice to people?

S: You know, [for so long] there has just been this space filled by statistics and jokes, but never with a real human being. And in that way I feel I've done my work. I don't think it's a perfect book, and there are parts that I wish I had done differently. But every time I let Precious's voice come through, I just felt the rawness and the power coming from a worthy human being. To me, nothing I had ever learned made any sense unless Precious made sense. That's how I felt writing it, and that's what pushed me forward.

COPYRIGHT 1996 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
 
so what's up with this latest flick that's supposed to be[keeping it real???]but looks to me like just another flick aimed at showing us at our worst,most of us know someone like the girl in the film,of course hollywood in all thier glory felt like it's once again time to have a black play the nastiest meanest role of the day and then maybe they'll get an oscar[yeah having one of those has really done wonders for-hallie berry]but hey hollywood knows best and they need that black dollar,ummm heavy dark girl[well at least she's not a maid,three cheers for hollywood]...maybe it's just me but it seems that we can only get recognition for being-bad cops-sluts-bad mothers,heaven forbid that a role would come along for a black-ceo-lawyer-doctor,nah ain't nobody gonna pay to see that, we blacks aren't ready for those roles just yet,not when there are good ol low down nasty roles outthere and we gotta keep it real right?

I agree. It makes no sense. But as long as they have a market for negativity , we won;t get nothing else. Oprah and who ever shud be ashamed of themselves.

We have a rich long positive history. Why won;t they make a story line that shows that ??

Proving again, that money and an Eurocentric definition of success does not nullify the dysfunction !!!




 
OK so when do we plan to end these pathologies

instead of waiting for movies or novels,
and then endlessly debate while there are 10 new Precious in every city since this post was made????????????????????????????????
What the brothers find fault in all this is that the horor and degredation that this young woman had faced will be

reduced to entertainment by most of us,
reduced to coffee table conversation and chit chat ,

and then forgot about


as more young women go through this terrorism and we collectively fail to discuss or plan for a solution
 
I agree. It makes no sense. But as long as they have a market for negativity , we won;t get nothing else. Oprah and who ever shud be ashamed of themselves.

We have a rich long positive history. Why wont they make a story line that shows that ??

Proving again, that money and an Eurocentric definition of success does not nullify the dysfunction !!!


Now, no, I'm not an "Oprah-ite." I don't even watch her show unless there's a particular episode I want to watch, which is rare.

But, I do want to be fair to her. This movie "PRECIOUS" may not be what some think Oprah should be showcasing; but as for our "rich long positive history," Oprah has also helped showcase some of that as well.....



A Complete List of Harpo Feature Films and Television Movies
By Elizabeth Borer, About.com Guide

Oprah Winfrey has her name in every aspect of the media - including movie making. Here is a listing of past productions by Harpo Films.

2007 The Great Debaters
Director: Denzel Washington
Cast:

Denzel Washington: Melvin B. Tolson
Forest Whitaker: James Farmer Sr.
Nate Parker: Henry Lowe
Jurnee Smollett: Samantha Booke
Denzel Whitaker: James Farmer Jr.
Kimberly Elise: Pearl Farmer

Based on a true story, this film tells the story of Professor Melvin Tolson and his elite debate team.

2007 For One More Day
Director: Lloyd Kramer

Cast:

Michael Imperioli: Charles "Chick" Benetto
Ellen Burstyn: Posey Benetto
Scott Cohen: Len Benetto
Samantha Mathis: Young Posey Benetto
Vadim Imperioli: Young Chick Benetto

The film version of Mitch Albom's novel of the same name.

2005 Their Eyes Were Watching God
Director: Darnell Martin

Cast:
Halle Berry: Janie Starks
Ruben Santiago-Hudson: Joe Starks
Michael Ealy: Tea Cake
Nicki Micheaux: Phoebe Watson
Lorraine Toussaint: Pearl Stone

The film version of Zora Neale-Hurston's novel of the same name.

2001 Amy & Isabelle
Director: Lloyd Kramer

Cast:
Elisabeth Shue: Isabelle Goodrow
Hanna Hall: Amy Goodrow
Martin Donovan: Peter Robertson

A classic mother-daughter story -- their secrets and gossip-filled town threaten to tear them apart.

1999 Tuesdays With Morrie
Director: Mick Jackson

Cast:
Hank Azaria: Mitch Albom
Jack Lemmon: Morrie Schwartz

The film version of Mitch Albom's novel of the same name.

1998 The Wedding
Director: Charles Burnett

Cast:
Halle Berry: Shelby Coles
Eric Thal: Meade Howell
Lynn Whitfield: Corrine Coles
Carl Lumbly: Lute McNeil

A story of a woman who has to choose between 2 men.

1998 David and Lisa
Director: Lloyd Kramer

Cast:
Sidney Poitier: Dr. Jack Miller
Lukas Haas: David
Brittany Murphy: Lisa
Debi Mazar: Maggie
Allison Janney: Alix

The story of two young people who meet in a psychiatric ward. Psychiatrist, Dr. Miller, helps David deal with his difficult past.

1998 Beloved
Director: Jonathan Demme

Cast:
Oprah Winfrey: Sethe
Danny Glover: Paul D Garner
Thandie Newton: Beloved
Kimberly Elise: Denver
Beah Richards: Baby Suggs/Grandma Baby
The film version of Toni Morrison's novel of the same name.

1997 Before Women Had Wings
Director: Lloyd Kramer

Cast:
Oprah Winfrey: Zora Williams
Ellen Barkin: Glory Marie Jackson
Tina Majorino: Abigail "Bird" Jackson
Julia Styles: Phoebe Jackson
John Savage: Billy Jackson

This story surrounds a family struggling and suffering through alcoholism and abuse. A friendship between Phoebe and Zora develops -- helping the family get back on track.

http://oprah.about.com/od/harpoproductions/tp/filmlistharpo.htm
 

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