The book, Push, follows the hero’s journey of a girl named Claireece Precious Jones. During her “hero’s journey” she has to face many negative events that impacts her life, such as being kicked out of school multiple times, having an abusive family, and a father who was not a positive person. Despite all the situations she is going through, she wants to keep the second child of her father, Abdul, because she knew if she kept him she could receive welfare, she wanted to give him a better life, and she was not able to take care of her first child, Mongo. (Sapphire) Precious knew if she kept Abdul she could receive welfare. “The welfare help Mama. It help me.” (73 Sapphire). She wanted to obtain welfare so she could leave the care of her mother
The plot of this book begins with the fact that Canadian girl named Laura finds out that her father is a humble pensioner, a former teacher, committed suicide from the bridge, during
Working as a teacher serving at-risk four-year-old children, approximately six of her eighteen students lived in foster care. The environment introduced Kathy to the impact of domestic violence, drugs, and family instability on a developing child. Her family lineage had a history of social service and she found herself concerned with the wellbeing of one little girl. Angelica, a foster child in Kathy’s class soon to be displaced again was born the daughter of a drug addict. She had been labeled a troublemaker, yet the Harrisons took the thirty-hour training for foster and adoptive care and brought her home to adopt. Within six months, the family would also adopted Angie’s sister Neddy. This is when the Harrison family dynamic drastically changes and Kathy begins a journey with over a hundred foster children passing through her home seeking refuge.
involved troubling situations. Look at how she grew up. The book starts off during a time of Jim
The movie Precious is a movie about a sixteen year old girl nicknamed Precious. The movie shows her difficult life as she lives with her mother. Precious is a teen mother expecting her second child, who is also her father’s child due to him raping her. She is verbally and physically abused constantly by her mother and lives in a very unhealthy environment overall. She takes care of herself and her mother and is told what to do everyday. In the movie she begins to turn her life around when a teacher has faith in her and she begins to get an education, and learns she is not what her mother thinks she is.
African American literature is a genre that has, in recent years, grown almost exponentially. African American novels such as Tina McElroy Ansa's Baby of the Family and Donald Goines' Black Girl Lost are increasingly becoming more popular with the public. Baby of the Family is a wonderfully written "coming of age novel" ("Reviews 2") about a young girl named Lena McPherson as she grows up and must learn to deal with her extraordinary powers. Much unlike this, Black Girl Lost is a "shocking novel" (Goines 208) about a young girl named Sandra, who is forced to live on the streets. Though each of these novels is unique in their own aspect, a common bond can be established between the two through the use of language employed in the text. Because of the various functions that language can serve in literature, it is a rather "fascinating phenomenon" (Blackshire-Belay 1) to study in reference to these two novels. In both Baby of the Family and Black Girl Lost, language is used to reflect the speech patterns of the minority culture, as a portrayal of different worlds within the novels, and acts as a mirror to the life of the main character in order to navigate plot speed.
Innocent: Confessions of a welfare mother is a memoir that defies the stigma that comes along with welfare and poverty. It outlines the trials and tribulations of a single Caucasian mother and her ability to maintain her family. Forced to make pivotal decisions and keep the best interest of her family in mind, she must take welfare handouts to get through her financial struggles. This memoir is a way to highlight the obstacles it takes to keep a stable household and get by at the worst times in a single mothers life. At a time of racism and despair, this single mother was able to find a place to call home and give her family a comfortable life.
The book , The Help by Kathryn Stockett, is about a women named Aibileen who is a black maid. She is taking care of her 17th white baby now. She works for a woman named Miss Leefolt. Aibileen has never disobeyed an order in her life and never intends to do so. Her friend Minny is the exact opposite. When she is around her boss, she has to hold herself back from sassing them all the time. Skeeter Phelan is different than the rest of the white ladies. She thinks that blacks aren’t all that bad. She decides to write a book about the lives of maids for white ladies. Otherwise known as the Help. She with the help of Aibileen and Minny hope to create a book that starts a revolution about what white people think about blacks.
Instead of providing a safe and loving environment for her daughter, she built up anger towards her and eventually lashed out, physically and emotionally abusing her. Mary carries resentment towards Precious because Carl preferred having sex with Precious rather than Mary. The resentment continued and progressively became more aggressive as the movie went on. Child abuse is a major social issue in not only the United States but all over the world. Cases of child abuse and neglect that involve black children are reported and are approximately twice that of the cases that involve white children. This film sheds light on negative social issues that occur in young African- American children lives, and how these characters within this movie gained power and ultimately decide to peruse a positive life for themselves. Out of the 7.4 billion people in this world, forty million children are abused each year; that is only the amount of reported cases and does not include unreported cases. In the United States, a child is abused every ten seconds. Abuse typically leads to an unsuccessful life, despite your race or ethnicity. Statically speaking, child abuse victims have a 38% increase arrest rate for violent crimes; and 84% of all prison inmates had been abused as a child. As her mother beats her; Precious dreams of a better life and eventually takes the necessary steps to achieve that dreamed about life. The director
Living in the ghetto of New York City: Harlem, the family relied on public assistance and welfare to survive. Precious endures physical, mental, and sexual abuse by both parents regularly. She lives with her mother, and her father allegedly has another family across town.
Precious, a movie based on the book Push written by Sapphire, is an interesting movie directed by Lee Daniels. Precious can be easily analyzed using basic motivation and emotion theories in psychology. The movie is about Claireece "Precious" Jones and how she becomes a strong, independent woman after breaking through her curse of physical and sexual abuse which she has endured since she was three months old. At the beginning, Precious is physically and verbally abused by her mother. In addition, Precious was raped by her father multiple times and impregnated twice. After being kicked out of her school because she was pregnant, Precious willingly joins the Each One Teach One alternative school so she can improve her reading and writing skills while, eventually, taking care of her two children. After some guidance from her teacher, Ms. Blu Rain, Precious starts feeling safe and starts to love herself and others around her. A lot of the behaviors in the movie can be easily explained by biological needs, psycho-social needs, and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Lee Daniel’s Precious is a movie centered around Precious Jones, a 16-year-old overweight black girl living in Harlem, New York. The movie begins when she is in public school pregnant with her second child by her father. Because Precious is pregnant, the principle recommends an alternative school for her. At home, Precious is a servant to her mother, Mary, who is physically, emotionally, verbally, and sexually abusing her. Mary constantly tells Precious that she is not good enough and that no one will ever want her. At times of distress, Precious tends to dissociate and fantasize about another life where she is a blonde white girl. She wants to be famous and loved by all. Precious arrives at the alternative school hardly knowing how to read or write. She gets placed in a class of girls with a dedicated teacher, Ms. Rain. Ms. Rain asks each student to write in a journal every day, and she will write back to their letters. This is the first time in the movie when Precious feels very
I personally think she was one of the contributors to the dysfunction, though it never showed her hurt or abuse precious the fact that she pretends everything was okay and would help the mother lie to the social worker, so she could continue to receive benefits from the state for her daughter and granddaughter shows how entropic the situation was.... ... middle of paper ... ... Precious is a film that looks behind this lovely idea to examine the economic forces and psychological detriments that make it an easier said than done experience, for individuals like Precious and people who are attached to her.
Most people have experienced some form of violence in their family. Many of these dramatic events involve children becoming victims of abuse. In the movie “Precious” an African American sixteen year old female is tormented by her parents. Precious is the victim of several different form of abuse including: sexual, neglect, psychological, and physical. She is pregnant with her second child, both her children biological parent is her own father, who constantly rapes her. Precious’s mother is envious of her daughter because of the sexual relationship he has with his daughter. This creates conflict among them resulting in physical and psychological abuse. Precious escapes from realty by imaging herself as a glamourous star. With the help of her
Clementine Rivers (“Tish”) and her fiancé Alonzo Hunt (“Fonny”) are planning to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of raping a Puerto Rican woman. While Fonny is in jail, Tish informs him that she is pregnant with his child. Tish’s family then goes on a quest to find evidence that will set Fonny free, showing how much they cared about him and the child. The love poured out from the Rivers’ dedication to freeing Fonny is evident of how one family will give and do everything to help their future son-in-law, even when his family will not. They stick together through thick and thin, giving nothing but their best for Fonny. This novel by Baldwin is not as popular as some of his other works, receiving only about 4,000 ratings on Goodreads.com,
I read the “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak, in which a little girl is thrown into an unknown world without her mother or brother. The main character of the book, Liesel, becomes a foster child in Germany during the 1940s. The book is over a span of years and we grow with Liesel. I really enjoyed this book and I would recommend it to anyone. It is set during the Holocaust, but it is still a coming of age book. I liked this book because the writer managed to write a book about a girl growing up and Nazi Germany. Neither one took away from each other and it all flowed very nicely.