Most people will be familiar with this story on account of the masterpiece motion picture "Precious," which won numerous awards, including the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize for best drama at the Sundance Film Festival, as well as a Special Jury Prize for supporting actress Mo'Nique. It was nominated for six Academy Awards, winning two for Best Supporting Actress for Mo'Nique and Geoffrey Fletcher for Best Adapted Screenplay, making him the first African-American to win a screenplay award at the Oscars.
Almost beyond belief, it was the acting debut for the actress who played the lead character, Gabourey Sidibe. Casting director Billy Hopkins reportedly chose her after an open-call audition at New York City's Lehman College. Gabby was chosen over 300 others.
That said, although this book was billed as "young adult" literature, I hope that's not true, in the case of teenagers, at least, because this is about as graphic and disturbing as one can imagine, and is certainly not for children. I wanted to like this more than I did, honestly, as the movie was superlative, one of the rare instances where the film is superior to the book, but it was so over-the-top that I really didn't enjoy it. I think the best description I've seen so far is "unapologetically raw." That's it in a nutshell.
This tragic novel that makes Charles Dickens's characters seem mild in comparison tells the story of Precious, an illiterate sixteen-year-old who is still in junior high school. Precious has been abused in every way a person can be abused, by her parents, including her mother who constantly beats and berates her, and her biological father who ... well, by whom she has had two children, the first at twelve. I'll leave it there, but the book doesn't: the descriptions are utterly graphic and nauseating, to the degree that I had to skip some of the passages - it's that disgusting.
I want to say that this is nothing more than the figment of someone's deranged imagination, but I know it's not. I know this happens in real life, and I want to acknowledge that.
What I did like is that Precious is not portrayed as a victim, but as a survivor, despite everything that's thrown at her, literally. She has a disabled daughter with Down Syndrome, probably the result of an incestuous relationship, she's illiterate and years behind in her schooling, but she still desires to learn, and her home life is the stuff of nightmares to a maximum security prison inmate.
She finally finds someone who believes in her, in the person of Ms. Blue Rain, a teacher at her alternative school where she's sent when she's expelled after the principal discovers she's pregnant for a second time. Precious makes tremendous strides in her education and life, getting away from her abusive mother... until the next hammer drops.
Perhaps what I liked best was the utterly accurate description of how the system consistently fails the most vulnerable in our society, the impoverished and under-educated who lack the ability to fight back. Precious falls through the cracks at almost every turn, is failed by her family and the system charged with protecting her, and is given up on by almost everyone, including her elementary school teachers.
When she sits almost catatonic in her second-grade classroom to try to avoid the cruel bullying, which she is subjected to almost incessantly, which no adult does anything about, and fail to even notice, one administrator tells her teacher to just ignore her, and "focus on the ones you CAN teach." In that regard, this story is very much a critique of the environments where so many black children are disadvantaged, and why they feel that they have no place in a society which cares nothing for them and does nothing to protect them.
Almost beyond belief, it was the acting debut for the actress who played the lead character, Gabourey Sidibe. Casting director Billy Hopkins reportedly chose her after an open-call audition at New York City's Lehman College. Gabby was chosen over 300 others.
That said, although this book was billed as "young adult" literature, I hope that's not true, in the case of teenagers, at least, because this is about as graphic and disturbing as one can imagine, and is certainly not for children. I wanted to like this more than I did, honestly, as the movie was superlative, one of the rare instances where the film is superior to the book, but it was so over-the-top that I really didn't enjoy it. I think the best description I've seen so far is "unapologetically raw." That's it in a nutshell.
This tragic novel that makes Charles Dickens's characters seem mild in comparison tells the story of Precious, an illiterate sixteen-year-old who is still in junior high school. Precious has been abused in every way a person can be abused, by her parents, including her mother who constantly beats and berates her, and her biological father who ... well, by whom she has had two children, the first at twelve. I'll leave it there, but the book doesn't: the descriptions are utterly graphic and nauseating, to the degree that I had to skip some of the passages - it's that disgusting.
I want to say that this is nothing more than the figment of someone's deranged imagination, but I know it's not. I know this happens in real life, and I want to acknowledge that.
What I did like is that Precious is not portrayed as a victim, but as a survivor, despite everything that's thrown at her, literally. She has a disabled daughter with Down Syndrome, probably the result of an incestuous relationship, she's illiterate and years behind in her schooling, but she still desires to learn, and her home life is the stuff of nightmares to a maximum security prison inmate.
She finally finds someone who believes in her, in the person of Ms. Blue Rain, a teacher at her alternative school where she's sent when she's expelled after the principal discovers she's pregnant for a second time. Precious makes tremendous strides in her education and life, getting away from her abusive mother... until the next hammer drops.
Perhaps what I liked best was the utterly accurate description of how the system consistently fails the most vulnerable in our society, the impoverished and under-educated who lack the ability to fight back. Precious falls through the cracks at almost every turn, is failed by her family and the system charged with protecting her, and is given up on by almost everyone, including her elementary school teachers.
When she sits almost catatonic in her second-grade classroom to try to avoid the cruel bullying, which she is subjected to almost incessantly, which no adult does anything about, and fail to even notice, one administrator tells her teacher to just ignore her, and "focus on the ones you CAN teach." In that regard, this story is very much a critique of the environments where so many black children are disadvantaged, and why they feel that they have no place in a society which cares nothing for them and does nothing to protect them.
Back to all reviews by this member
Back to all reviews of this book
Back to Book Reviews
Back to Book Details
Back to all reviews of this book
Back to Book Reviews
Back to Book Details
