Yes, Push Is Banned!

Sapphire’s Push is written in the barely literate voice of Claireece Precious Jones, a sixteen-year-old who has been raped by her father since childhood, borne two of his children, and been physically and emotionally brutalized by her mother. When Precious is expelled from school after her second pregnancy, she enrolls in an alternative education program where a teacher named Blu Rain begins teaching her to read and write. The novel is raw, profane, and almost unbearably painful. It’s also a story about the transformative power of literacy and the possibility of self-determination even in the most crushing circumstances. The 2009 film adaptation, Precious, won two Academy Awards.

Push was challenged 11 times in the 2024-2025 PEN America data, with bans across Florida and Georgia school districts. The book has been among the most frequently challenged novels since its publication, with objections citing graphic sexual abuse, incest, violence, and language. Push is not comfortable reading. It’s not meant to be. Sapphire wrote it to give voice to a population that mainstream literature overwhelmingly ignores: poor, Black, abused girls whose suffering is systemic rather than individual. The question of whether the book belongs in school libraries is really a question about whether schools are willing to acknowledge that students like Precious exist.