Push

     In this novel or story it is about a young girl who has been physically, mentally, and sexually abused since she was a young girl.  She can't read and has trouble in school and the kids make fun of her because she is fat.  In this blog entry I would like to address how she came out of this and what helped her become a different person by the end of the book.
     I believe out of all the people she came in contact with the one person that helped her the most was Ms. Rain.  Even through school no one seemed to want to help her out of the situation she was in they just passed her on to the next person to take care of her.  The hospital did the same thing when they found out that the father of her baby was her father they didn't place much of an effort into helping her.  Ms. Rain and the Each One Teach One helped her build herself into excepting who she was and discovering who she was and to confront those things that weren't making her who she wanted to be.  Ms. Rain taught her how to read she had always wanted to know how and now she could read and write and communicate that way.  Ms. Rain became her answers in her journal.  She responded to Precious and listened to what she had to say.   When Precious was in trouble like when she had the baby and she ran away from her mother she did everything in her power to get Precious a home to stay in while she was looking for a way to sustain for herself and her kid.  Ms. Rain was a role model for Precious and someone she could count on which she never had before.
     Besides Ms. Rain the other students in the school helped support her as well.  She learned that not everyone was perfect no matter how good or bad looking they were.  People weren't abused or lived bad lives because of the way they looked.  They also had her back and listened to her.  She had friends for the first time and people who really cared about her well being and didn't abuse her in anyway.  I think what she learns most from these students is compassion and caring that she never had before.  Some of them introduced her to support groups that would help her come to terms and resolve her past of sexual, mental, and physical abuse.  Here she is able to see more people with like problems that they have faced in there lives.  She can vent out her thoughts and listen to others and compare, think, and come to terms with what happened to her.
     By the end of the book she becomes Precious who is an independent girl with her own thoughts and feelings.  She is free and has a goal in life.  She can read and write and wants to get better at it and become something.  She wants to raise her kids and not be like her parents.  She sees what is wrong and what is right and is able to stand up for herself.  This is very different from the scared and scarred Precious in the beginning.  She is afraid to stand up to her parents and is afraid of what would happen to her if she rebelled.  She just thought she would live the life she was living forever.
     Precious is a strong and diligent character whose change is something we can all look up to and we can all think that like Precious we want the best for ourselves so we need to work hard like her.