PCA 111 Summer 2010 Homework Due Week 3

Homework Due Week 3, May 19

Read Push, Part I & II (pp. 3-66). When reading, consider literary conventions such as: narrator, tone, voice, plot, simple versus complex characters, and implied audience. Why did the author choose to write the book in this way? What is she trying to say?
After you've completed the reading, pick one of the following questions. Write a 1-2 page response to that question. When including evidence from the novel, provide proper citation. After writing that paper in Word, cut and paste it to your Blog and bring a hard copy to class, too.

READING GROUP GUIDE[1]
1. What does this story tell us about the inadequacy of ordinary schools to deal with students’ problems and with their resulting learning handicaps? “I got A in English and never say nuffin’, do nuffin’”[p. 49], Precious says. Precious’s principal in effect tells her teacher to give up on her, saying, “Focus on the ones who can learn”[p. 37]. Is this an understandable or forgivable attitude? How would you describe Mr. Wicher and his teaching methods? Is he merely a coward or is he trying his best?
2. During the course of the story, Precious is obliged to confront her own prejudices and modify or reject them. Her experience with the Hispanic EMS man makes her look at Hispanics for the first time as human beings like herself; her friendship with Ms. Rain and Jermaine makes her reexamine her knee-jerk homophobia. Early in the novel she says, “I hate crack addicts. They give the race a bad name”[p. 14], but later she questions that uncompromising position. In an interview, Sapphire said of Precious that “she doesn’t know that hating gay people or hating Jews or hating foreigners is detrimental to her” (Interview, June 1996). Why is it detrimental to her? Why is it imperative that she lose her prejudices before she, herself, can be helped?
3. “Miz Rain say value. Values determine how we live much as money do. I say Miz Rain stupid there. All I can think she don’t know to have NOTHIN’”[p. 64]. Which opinion do you agree with, or is there something to be said for both? What answer, if any, does the novel offer?
4. “One of the myths we’ve been taught,” Sapphire has said, “is that oppression creates moral superiority. I’m here to tell you that the more oppressed a person is, the more oppressive they will be” (Bomb, Fall 1996). How does the novel illustrate the concept of the cycle of abuse? How does Precious break that cycle, and what aspects of her own character enable her to do so?
[1] The following questions have been adapted from Vintage/Anchor Books website. For all the discussion questions, please see: http://vintage-anchor.knopfdoubleday.com/2009/09/24/what-to-watch-precious-based-on-the-novel-push/.