Push, Precious, and New Narratives of Slavery in Harlem

This essay situates Sapphire's Push and the film Precious based on it in relation to the slave narrative and neoslave narrative as genres in African American literary history. It draws on James Olney's classic critical elaboration of defining features of the slave narrative to examine ways in which both the novel and film cite features of this genre in their composition and formal design. In its first section, the essay explores parallel scenes in the novel and film, including those related to the character Precious's parental neglect, sexual abuse, and quest for literacy. In its second, it examines Precious's confrontation with her mother, her flight from home, and the allusions to features and literary devices adopted from the slave narrative in the novel and film. It interprets this character's abuses in relation to the traumatic history of slavery. It suggests that Push and Precious connect their narratives to literary forms such as the slave narrative and neoslave narrative to underscore ways in which contemporary conditions in black communities such as fatherlessness, rape, labor, and illiteracy recast aspects of the trauma of slavery in the contemporary era and demonstrate the possibility for rising above such limitations and exploring their destructive impact on black female subjectivity.