"My fahver don't see me really. If he did he would know I was like a white girl, a real person, inside. He would not climb on me from forever and stick his dick n' get me inside on fire, bleed, I bleed then he slap me. Can't he see I am a girl for flowers and straw legs and a place in the picture" (32).
I found it difficult to put into words how the first section of Precious, or Push, affected me. I found myself feeling physically sick at times. There were so many points to touch upon in this novel; I was overwhelmed when I sat down to write this blog. I decided to zero in on the quote above. In Precious's narrative, she often wishes she were white. Above she says a white girl is a real person. I have never before read a text towards which I became so emotionally transfixed. The raw material is jolting and coercive in the respect that I didn't want to accept it. I did not want to accept the weight and reality, the gravity of such unfathomable circumstances. And why does it make me so uncomfortable? I am a white female, grew up in a nice family, and I have had no traumatic events in my life. In writing this, I feel as if I am shifting the attention from Precious to myself, and that is not the intention. I merely want to identify why this quote made me so uncomfortable. To Precious, I am a real person. That stood out to me, and I am not sure how I should take it. It makes me feel awkward, undeserving. Why is it that I was born into cirumstances in which I did not have to be afraid, and I grew up with a sense of support and freedom. Why didn't Precious have that freedom or support? Or other girls who suffer as she does in the novel? Why do some people suffer and others do not? I realize there is no rational or concrete answer to that question. Unfortuneatly, because of the history of the country in which we live, a girl such as Precious must wish that her skin were lighter. Interestingly enough, I almost wish my skin were darker for this same reason. Perhaps then I will no longer be ignorant, spoiled, perfect, etc. Perhaps then people will not assume that I have the world at my feet. I don't mean to speak selfishly; I am merely trying to see this quote from all sides--from the perspective of the black girl and the perspective of the white girl. Even though I can stand back and say, "I'm not perfect, I'm not beautiful, life is hard for me sometimes, I am afraid of life." It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because I wasn't raped by my father. I didn't have a child at twelve, and I can read and write. My hardships are not as severe as that of Precious, or Rita, or Germaine, or any girl growing up in poverty, drugs, fatherless, motherless, fear. Does this make me a bad person? Sometimes I feel that it does. I feel that it is my fault that my life is easier than theirs. It is nothing I can help. Nothing they can help. Society, with it's rigid divides, ideals of ethnic dichotomy, scales of skin tone, society separates, breaks, ruins, hurts the heart and soul and body; leads us to believe that those who look differently are the other, people with which we cannot identify. Even myself--and I have always considered myself open to anyone--I fear a girl like Precious because I cannot grasp her reality and it is not fair to her.
We can all have a place in "the picture." I want us all to be beautiful and unique and ourselves, every distinction illuminated, in the greater picture.
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