African American Literature

Thursday, August 24, 2006

End of PUSH


Did anyone else feel completely and utterly stunned that the end of the book left us all hanging by a limb with no answers? I really thought I would get a much more in depth account of the end of the story, so to speak, or at the very least an account of Precious' efforts to secure housing and employment. The ending was problmatic for me also because there were simply too many unresolved issues with the characters. It was as if Sapphire was setting us up for a sequel, but I haven't heard about one yet. I guess I feel cheated in a way, robbed of the ending; I feel as if I put so much emotion into reading the novel, I deserve some answers darn it! Such is life, right? I do, however, like that Sapphire included the stories from the main girls who wrote for the "class book." This was a way to shed some light on the trauma of the girls in Precious' class and to better understand that there are many different types of racism, abuse and neglect that span all races and cultures. The "book" brought all the girls in the class together; similarly, PUSH has brought us together as a class by forcing us into a shared compassion for Precious and others like her.

1 Comments:

Blogger Kristie said...

I think you are right, Tara; after re-reading the ending, it made more sense to me in a much deeper way. As I commented in class, I really see the correlary between the not-so-neat ending and real life. Also, the poetry seemed to reflect the growth of Precious, and it illustrated the way in which Precious had begun to play with language to express herself artistically. I wasn't so dissatisfied after our class dicussion.

11:04 AM  

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