Push (Last Post)

    Push as a book had a lot going on symbolically, emotionally, and thoughtfully.  It symbolically sent a message to people about pushing for your hardest and doing everything you can to be a perfect you.  Emotionally it sent the reader into so many emotions at one time.  The book was thought invoking and took the reading into a thought process that maybe we haven't been into.
    The book is called, "Push" and it about a girl who grows up in Harlem and is raped by her father who impregnates her twice and a crazy mother who lets this happen to keep her husband nearby.  I don't think it was an accident that the author named the book, "Push" and used it as a term for when giving birth, but also a verb to keep going and to keep fighting your way through life.  I noticed that Precious throughout her life has to face challenges like her abusive parents, not being able to read, people passing her on to the next person to handle, and her images of herself physically and mentally.  She has to push her way through and find how to get herself to a life she wants to live for herself, but more importantly to her for her children.  I think this can also be a message the reader can pick up on.  Its a message to keep trying no matter how hard or how long that journey may be.
    Emotionally the book triggers a lot of anger for the reader.  You start wondering why no one is helping her in the beginning?  Why her father rapes her?  Why her mother doesn't do anything about it and lets it happen? You feel sad for Precious and what she has to live through.  You feel even more pain, sympathy, and sorrow when she gets aids from her father.  From reading this book a whirlpool of emotions surface and its hard to come to terms with the story.  I think it makes it even harder because it isn't written in a third parties point of view but through her eyes.  To see Precious's thoughts on the whole situation is sad and the details are sometime disgusting and unhumane compared to how are lives are.
     Thoughtfully the book invokes a lot of thinking.  We start to question society and what are institutions are really doing to help people.  We start to ask is every case can be helped through government institutions and even the public school system?  Through this book you see that there has to be a lot of other people who need to step in to help and not just these institutions.  The book made me personally look around at my outside world.  I know that when I become a teacher I'm going to want to help every student I possible can even if I have a student like Precious.  Although it maybe hard to detect and hard to help a student like that I want to try my hardest to at least educate that person and not push them to the next teacher or person to handle.  Sometimes someone needs to step in and sometimes that person has to be you or me.