“Rock the Motherfucking House”: Guiding a Study of Sapphire’s PUSH

Abstract

PUSH is hard to read, the experiences in the novel hard to imagine as real for some, too real for comfort for others. The novel is equally hard to talk about, yet impossible to ignore once readers are stung by the illiterate African American adolescent female narrator’s bold opening line of the novel: “I was left back when I was twelve because I had a baby for my fahver” (Sapphire 3). Thereafter and at every turn, Sapphire seduces us into a whirlwind of raw emotion as Precious tells and re-creates her stories of her own sexual, physical, social, and psychological abuse. Described by critics and reviewers as “disturbing, affecting, and manipulative” (Kakutani), “prohibitively offensive” (Green), “paint-peelingly profane and thoroughly real” (Powers), “electrifying” and unflinchingly honest (African American Literature Book Club), and “maudlin (at times pornographic)” (Kirkus Reviews), the novel is a hauntingly lyrical compilation of many of Sapphire’s and her former students’ lived experiences. About the novel’s controversial subject matter and execution, Sapphire told an interviewer, “I wanted to tell a really pure, unadulterated story about a girl. I wanted to rock the motherfucking house” (Gordon 28)—the house as social institution, the house as social convention and expectation, the house as genre. Daring to name, write about, and shine a spotlight on what novelist Toni Morrison calls, in Beloved, “the nastiness of life,” Sapphire refuses to let us escape the grasp and gravity of Precious’s experiences—her losses and her triumphs (23).