Reading Response: Push

     In the book Push, the main character Precious Jones is a sixteen-year-old that feels like she is hidden. Her father rapes her and her mother doesn’t show any affection to her. Precious is pregnant with her second child for her father, but her teacher that she soon meets, teaches her how to start a life of her own and get back on the right track. Throughout the book, aware of all her ups and downs, Precious always mentions her love for school. I’ve been drawn to the conclusion that Precious is determined to further her education and change her attitude.

     It’s clear that Precious is ready to accept the many challenges that will confront her. Despite her setbacks, Precious has proven that she is willing to get herself back on track, by receiving higher grades. Precious says “I’m getting pretty good grades. I usually do. I just want to gone get the f*** out of I.S.146 and go to high school and get my diploma.” That emphasizes that Precious really does want to ignore what has happened in the past and brighten up the path for her future. With some guidance, Precious should able to attain that goal.
     Whenever someone like school staff pull Precious out of class, she’s always complaining to them about wanting to go back to class. The teachers might think that she’s being rude, but Precious says that she never likes answering their questions because she doesn’t like talking about the tragedies she’s experienced in her past. “I don’t want to miss no more of maff class. I like maff class,” Precious tells Mrs. Lichenstein. This shows that Precious looks forward to going to math class. Precious tells her math teacher, “I ain’ going nowhere until the bell ring. I came here to learn maff and you go’n teach me.” Precious looks forward to coming to school and learning new things, but is always caught up having to talk to her teachers about the problems she’s having, which makes her stuck at the same level, and she doesn’t get to move on.

     All in all, Precious tries her best to ignore the troubles she is facing and concentrate more on her education, but always happens to be questioned about her pregnancy. From my point of view, it’s not Precious’ fault for all of this, because she didn’t mean for any of it to happen. It was mostly all her father. The author wants the reader to view the story from Precious’ point of view. The reader is probably meant to see the conflict and how Precious feels about all of this. This book has made me realize, that we see pregnant teenagers all the time, almost every day. But sometimes, we don’t know the full story and we shouldn’t jump to any type of conclusions about them because they might be fighting a battle that affects them in outrageous ways.