Dear Mr. Fantasy

Precious' life is as fantastical as her name would suggest. She's married to a white math teacher, lives in Westchester, is well-loved by both of her parents, and lights up the Apollo Theater as the best dancer the venue has ever seen. Of course, none of this is actually real. It all takes place inside her head.

I was struck immediately by the allegorical comparisons Sapphire creates between rape and dancing. Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz," a famous poem which compares a father's abuse of his son to a dance, a waltz, where the father's "whiskey stained breath" clings to his son like fists choking the life out of the child, runs paralellel to Push. Sapphire's uses Roethke's imagery and comparisons, that of a child retreating into a dance-like fantasy whenever they are abused by their father, throughout much of her novel. "Then I change stations, change bodies. I be dancing in videos! In movies! I be breaking, fly just a dancin'! Uhm humm heating up the stage at the Apollo for Doug E. Fresh or Al B. Shure. They love me! Say I'm one of the best dancers ain' no doubt of or about that!" However, unlike "My Papa's Waltz," which humanizes the father to some extent so we can understand why he is so abusive towards his child, none of this is present in Push. Instead, the audience is shown a father who basks in sleazy dualities. Dad compliments Precious (if it can be called a 'compliment') with "I'm gonna marry you," only to follow it up with "you as wide as the Mississppi" in the same sentence. Precious doesn't only retreat into fantasy when her father rapes her, either, as seen when she is "walking down Lennox when bad thoughts hit me I space out" to her first day at Each One Teach One. Additionally, fantasy is one of the few ways Precious copes with what she feels is a lack of intelligence - a disconnect from normalcy - on her part.

"Push the button, stupid, I tell myself. I push the button; I'm not stupid, I tell myself." There is abundant indecisiveness in nearly all of Precious' actions and reactions. Precious is shown projectig the same "mixed signals" her father thrusts onto her; it's all portrayed as a cyclical experience. Her self-image is topsy-turvy; she is at once confident and tough, but uncertain and vulnerable at the same time. In contrast to Precious' near-bullying attitude in Mr. Wicher's class, her reflections regarding her father - or lack thereof, really - approach gingerly stated levels of regret, uncertainty, and misunderstanding. "If he did he would I was like a white girl, a /real/ person, inside," muses Precious, noting how her father cares little for his daughter beyond shallow sexual gratification. Additionally, the 'white girl' symbolism, the dualities between black and white, is a repeated theme in Push. Although Precious boastingly says she believes Louis Farrakhan's stance that "crackers is the cause of everything bad," her actions, even the majority of her words, signal an altogether different (as well as confusing) opinion. While doting upon Mr. Wicher, she curses out Mrs. Lichenstein, for seemingly arbitrary reasons. To Precious, Mrs. Lichenstein is a "fat-ass bitch" irregardless of her being one of the few professionals who expresses an interest in helping her. It doesn't matter; what I noticed about Precious is her tendency to lash out at most of the women in her life, aggressively and defensively tossing around words like "bitch," "cunt bucket", and "whore" without consideration. With a mother like hers, should he even have a high opinion of other women in general? White men are barely even addressed throughout the book, but white women? At every turn. White women, black women, Jewish women, Spanish women; excepting the Spanish nurse who delivered Mongo, Carl, and Mr. Wicher, there is no such thing as a male presence in Push. Precious constantly makes demeaning remarks regarding how light-skinned certain black women are, especially in relation to the nurses at the hospital and her psychiatrist. Sapphire intentionally made nearly all of the characters in Push female. In addition to giving herself freedom to explore women's issues amongst African-Americans in Push, the all-female cast centralizes Push's main concepts - gender, incest, rape, racism - onto a singular, funneled identity. It serves to make the novel more easily digestible (i.e. more enjoyable for men who prefer not reading about "women's issues") as a whole. A more male viewpoint is given through Jermaine who, while a lamentingly underdeveloped character, stands out as a deviant amongst the cast appearance and personality-wise. Gender and ethnicity are two of the few aspects to Precious, her "black queen" self, which she can be unquestioningly proud of, while an ethnically-charged inferiority complex towards her intelligence guides much of Precious' other interactions with the rest of the world: Miz Rain, the principal, Mr. Wicher, her classmates. Sapphire tastefully captures the whirlwind reactions minorities may feel towards the majority like the author has experienced significant racial prejudice herself. I say tastefully, because Sapphire doesn't take the easy out and make her main character an Uncle Tom, or on the opposite end of the spectrum, a carbon copy of Louis Farrakhan's draconian politics, a follower. Precious is complex: while in the beginning doubt is integral to her character - awkward moments in Mr. Wicher's class, such as "his face is red, he is shaking, I back off, I have won, I /guess/" when she challenges the teacher - she begins to grow independence while in Each One Teach One. "I look at Miz Teacher's long, dreadlocky hair, look kinda nice but kinda nasty too," says Precious, initially with learned distaste until she quickly follows the statement up with the open-ended "I don't know how I feel about people with hair like that." In any one else such an unsure attitude would signal a lack of conviction or at worst, extreme flightiness, it's a much more meaningful action coming from Precious, to break away from her mother's coercive brainwashing, and a step in the right direction.