About the Author This is Sapphire's first novel. She was born in 1950 and grew up on army bases in California, Pennsylvania, and Texas. She was graduated from City College in New York, received an MFA from Brooklyn College, and taught reading and writing to teenagers and adults in Harlem and the Bronx for eight years. Sapphire is a performance poet and the author of American Dreams. She lives in New York City. Product Description 2 cassettes / 3 hoursPerformed by the authorAn electrifying first novel that shocks by its language, its circumstances, and its brutal honesty, Push recounts a young black street-girl's horrendous and redemptive journey through a Harlem inferno. For Precious Jones, 16 and pregnant with her father's child, miraculous hope appears and the world begins to open up for her when a courageous, determined teacher bullies, cajoles, and inspires her to learn to read, to define her own feelings and set them down in a diary. From Library Journal It does not get much worse than 16-year-old Precious Johnson's life. Illiterate, physically and sexually abused by both parents, and impregnated for the second time by her father?her first child has Down syndrome?she is outraged when she is suspended from her Harlem middle school. It is this suspension, however, that offers hope as Precious enrolls in an alternative program, learns to read and write, and begins a journal that both chronicles her disturbing life and becomes her outlet against the brutality and confusion she endures. The language is raw, and the situations are graphic enough to elicit an occasional cringe on the listener's part. Precious's story rings so true and Sapphire's reading is so realistic that listeners are compelled to persevere to the end. Highly recommended.?Susan McCaffrey, Sturgis Pub. Sch. Lib., Mich.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. From the Inside Flap / 3 hoursPerformed by the authorAn electrifying first novel that shocks by its language, its circumstances, and its brutal honesty, Push recounts a young black street-girl's horrendous and redemptive journey through a Harlem inferno. For Precious Jones, 16 and pregnant with her father's child, miraculous hope appears and the world begins to open up for her when a courageous, determined teacher bullies, cajoles, and inspires her to learn to read, to define her own feelings and set them down in a diary. From AudioFile Can a lesbian English teacher save an abused, black, 16-year-old, HIV-positive, unwed mother? Performance artist Sapphire (Ramona Lofton) chronicles such a fictional case from the teen's point of view. Under its brutal, streetwise crust of foul language and uncomfortable truths, this is a loving, sentimental, and, at times, improbably optimistic first novel. The author reads her first-person narrative in a strident staccato, but whatever she lacks in vocal grace and histrionic acumen, she compensates for in directness and authenticity. She has written a more interesting, likable protagonist in Precious Jones than she impersonates though she nicely brings out Jones's indomitable life force. Y.R. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine