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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
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