Fruit

1. Fruit • Makes a list that includes “lose weight” • Mom says he is ok • Mom says his sister might not find a date • Billy’s dad thinks he could play football

2. What is the effect of the “book within a book” trope? • What role does poetry play? • Literacy? • Precious’s weight? • This book was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work of Fiction. • Pg 11 internalized racism, passing, colorism • Pg 129 girls as bombs • “Umm hmm, I was raised by a psycho maniac fool” (135).

3. Can you anticipate the critical need this book fulfilled? Or, What kind of articles, about what kind of literary or cultural trends, were written in which Push was invoked?

4. The absence of black girls with AIDS in literature. • Literature written to right the inequalities of society. • How inner-city books clubs can provide a transformational space (in which Push was one of the books, ranked the least favorite by the readers) • In a book about the Romantic sensibility in children’s literature (in a chapter about the contemporary child who “resists utter ‘despair’ and offers the ‘solace’ of ‘hope and honesty.’” • Increasingly unrealistic portrayals of African Americans in literature in the name of “experimental literature.” • A teacher narrative about introducing interruptive pedagogy using Push. • Student analysis of conceptual metaphors in literature. • As a rape and incest-survivor narrative. • Developments in contemporary literature, including the book within a book trope increasingly found in African American literature.

5. The (Missing) Faces of African American Girls with AIDS by Nels P. Highberg

6. Although Precious is at the center of Push, readers must be careful not to reduce this story to that of one person living an individual life. She suffers as she does because of the complete failure of numerous social institutions: The school system that promotes her to the ninth grade even though she can barely read the alphabet--the same system that kicks her out during her second pregnancy. Then there is the welfare system that does nothing for Precious except send checks to her mother for Precious's first child, even though that child has lived somewhere else for years. And finally, my background in medical humanities causes me to be particularly troubled by the failure of the medical system to recognize Precious's needs.

7. Some critics accuse Sapphire of pandering to the dominant culture's penchant for images of African-American poverty and depravity.

8. What is the effect of the “book within a book” trope? • What role does poetry play? • Literacy? • Precious’s weight? • This book was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work of Fiction. • Pg 11 internalized racism, passing, colorism • Pg 129 girls as bombs • “Umm hmm, I was raised by a psycho maniac fool” (135).