Story Summary Clarice Precious Jones, who goes by her middle name, is a 16-year-old African American female who lives in Harlem, New York. Precious is pregnant with her second child, the first of which is a girl who lives with Precious’ grandmother, has Down syndrome and was born four years earlier. Both of Precious’ pregnancies are due to being raped by her biological father, abuse that began at the age of three. Though she does not see her father often, Precious’ mother, Mary, is also physically, emotionally and sexually abusive to her on a daily basis. Mary treats Precious like a slave, beats her often and emotionally tears her down. Furthermore, Mary is scamming the system for welfare benefits, claiming to care for Precious’ first child and telling Precious that school is not important and will not help her in life so to settle and continue collecting the welfare check. One day, Precious is called to speak with her school’s principle who asks her to begin attending an “alternative” school being she is pregnant again and still in junior high school. Though Mary is furious that the Principle made this suggestion, Precious does begin attending the school and, through testing, it is determined that she is illiterate. The school begins to help Precious understand the opportunities that education with have on her life and the life of her children. After giving birth to her second child, Precious returns home to an enraged Mary who’s welfare checks have been cut off because Precious told the social worker the truth about where her daughter lives and who impregnated her. To protect the baby, Precious runs out of her home that night and eventually moves into a halfway house where see continues to make significant progress. ... ... middle of paper ... ...throughout the treatment process could revolve heavily around trust and building rapport between the therapist and Precious. Until now, her life has never involved a consistent and dependable relationship and she has learned how to fully rely on herself and survive. Helping her to break down those barriers, and allow herself to be vulnerable to the relationship, will be an issue that may come up throughout many years of therapeutic work and processing. In addition, Precious will require repetitive encouragement and praise for her efforts as she currently feels she is worthless to the world and unable to see beyond that. Though this may improve, it will be a challenge she will face for the remainder of her life. It would be vital to ensure Precious is equipped with a number of “tools” to help her deal with self-esteem, motivation and having a positive worldview.
There is a slight glimmer of hope when the school year ends and the girls all receive their report cards. They stand eagerly in the hallway, none of them can break their gaze at the slips of paper in their teacher’s hands. Pashtana finishes 15th in her class and in this moment looks forward to a new year in the 8th grade. Unfortunately, Pashtana and her family were living off of $7 a week, a dollar to spend a day. She soon got married to her cousin and has not been back to school since their last day.
In the young life of Essie Mae, she had a rough childhood. She went through beatings from her cousin, George Lee, and was blamed for burning down her house. Finally Essie Mae got the nerve to stand up for herself and her baby sister, Adline as her parents were coming in from their work. Her dad put a stop to the mistreatment by having her and her sister watched by their Uncle Ed. One day while Essie Mae's parents were having an argument, she noticed that her mothers belly was getting bigger and bigger and her mom kept crying more and more. Then her mother had a baby, Junior, while the kids were out with their Uncle Ed. Her uncle took her to meet her other two uncles and she was stunned to learn that they were white. She was confused by this but when she asked her mom, Toosweet, about it her mom would not give her an answer one way or the other. Once her mom had the baby, her father started staying out late more often. Toosweet found out that her dad was seeing a woman named Florence. Not long after this, her mother was left to support her and her siblings when her father left. Her mother ended up having to move in with family until she could obtain a better paying job in the city. As her childhood went on she started school and was very good at her studies. When she was in the fourth grade, her mom started seeing a soldier named Raymond. Not too long after this, her mother got pregnant and had James. Her mother and Raymond had a rocky relationship. When James was born, Raymond's mother came and took the baby to raise because she said that raising four children was too much of a burden for a single parent to handle. Raymond went back to the service for a while but then when he came back he and Toosweet had another baby. Raymond's brothers helped him build a new house for them to live in and they brought James back to live with them. During this time Essie Mae was working for the Claiborne family and she was starting to see a different point of view on a lot of things in life. The Claiborne's treated her almost as an equal and encouraged her to better herself.
Baby narrates her story through her naïve, innocent child voice. She serves as a filter for all the events happening in her life, what the narrator does not know or does not comprehend cannot be explained to the readers. However, readers have reason not to trust what she is telling them because of her unreliability. Throughout the beginning of the novel we see Baby’s harsh exposure to drugs and hurt. Jules raised her in an unstable environment because of his constant drug abuse. However, the narrator uses flowery language to downplay the cruel reality of her Montreal street life. “… for a kid, I knew a lot of things about what it felt like to use heroin” (10). We immediately see as we continue reading that Baby thinks the way she has been living her life is completely normal, however, we as readers understand that her life is in fact worse then she narrates. Baby knows about the impermanent nature of her domestic security, however, she repeatedly attempts to create a sense of home each time her and Jules move to another apartm...
The story of “Precious” provides an excellent example of how a person can become lost in the system, and also how one can begin to turn things around by utilizing available resources. Precious’s mother, Mary, has been taking advantage of Precious to help her manipulate the system so Mary can continue to receive welfare benefits. Precious ultimately meets with the social worker, Mrs. Weiss, who begins to help her move forward in life. It is my understanding that Precious initially met with Mrs. Weiss for welfare benefits, but this relationship seemed to change as the movie progressed. I was admittedly taken aback by the conditions of the office in which Mrs. Weiss worked, how she interacted with Precious initially,
Working as a teacher serving at-risk four-year-old children, approximately six of her eighteen students lived in foster care. The environment introduced Kathy to the impact of domestic violence, drugs, and family instability on a developing child. Her family lineage had a history of social service and she found herself concerned with the wellbeing of one little girl. Angelica, a foster child in Kathy’s class soon to be displaced again was born the daughter of a drug addict. She had been labeled a troublemaker, yet the Harrisons took the thirty-hour training for foster and adoptive care and brought her home to adopt. Within six months, the family would also adopted Angie’s sister Neddy. This is when the Harrison family dynamic drastically changes and Kathy begins a journey with over a hundred foster children passing through her home seeking refuge.
This book shows the struggles that the main character, Precious Jones, has to go through after she was raped by her father twice. Not only is she raped, but her mother does nothing about it and just wants her to live with what ha...
When you think of the word “poverty” or “poor” what comes to mind? Some think of hunger, minorities, dirty areas, women, and homeless people. What about when you hear the term “abuse”? For most people, abuse means physical; getting beat up or hit. Although abuse can mean getting beat up or hit, there is far more that follows. Abuse can take on many forms like physical, emotional or sexual. The film Precious by Lee Daniels, based on the novel Push by Sapphire, encounters not only the obvious sexual abuse but physical and emotional abuse as well. Precious starts off with Claireece Precious Jones, played by Gabourey Sidibe, at her school in Harlem. She is called to the office because the principal has found out she is pregnant…Again. Kicked out of school, Precious now tries to find an alternative when her principal tells her about “Each One Teach One”, an alternative school. Precious enrolls and goes through a journey with her new teacher, who becomes her closest friend, her newborn son, and her abusive mother. This drama film is brutal, hard-hitting, and very emotional.
Girl by Jamaica Kincaid demonstrate how a mother cautions her daughter, in becoming a responsible woman in her society. Although the daughter hasn’t gotten into adolescence yet, the mother fears that her daughter’s current behavior, if continued, will tip to a life of promiscuity. The mother believes that a woman’s status or propriety determines the quality of her life in the community. Hence, gender roles, must be carefully guarded to maintain a respectable front. Her advice centers on how to uphold responsibility. The mother cautions her daughter endlessly; emphasising on how much she wants her to realize her role in the society by acting like woman in order to be respected by the community and the world at large. Thus, Jamaica Kincaid’s
...her father’s intense racism and discrimination so she hid the relationship at all costs. Connie realized that she could never marry an African American man because of her father’s racial intolerance. If she were to have a mixed child, that child would be greatly discriminated against because of hypodecent. One day, Connie’s dad heard rumors about her relationship so he drove her car to the middle of nowhere, and tore it apart. Then, he took his shotgun and went to look for Connie and her boyfriend. Connie was warned before her father found her, and she was forced to leave town for over six months. Connie’s father burned her clothes, so she had to leave town with no car, no clothes and no money at sixteen years old. Connie had lived in poverty her entire life, but when she got kicked out she learned to live with no shelter and sometimes no food at all.
Rose Mary is a selfish woman and decides not to go to school some mornings because she does not feel up to it. Jeannette takes the initiative in making sure that her mother is prepared for school each morning because she knows how much her family needs money. Even though Rose Mary starts to go to school every day, she does not do her job properly and thus the family suffers financially again. When Maureen’s birthday approaches, Jeannette takes it upon herself to find a gift for her because she does not think their parents will be able to provide her with one. Jeannette says, “at times I felt like I was failing Maureen, like I wasn’t keeping my promise that I’d protect her - the promise I’d made to her when I held her on the way home from the hospital after she’d been born. I couldn’t get her what she needed most- hot
The story follows three girls- Jeanette, the oldest in the pack, Claudette, the narrator and middle child, and the youngest, Mirabella- as they go through the various stages of becoming civilized people. Each girl is an example of the different reactions to being placed in an unfamiliar environment and retrained. Jeanette adapts quickly, becoming the first in the pack to assimilate to the new way of life. She accepts her education and rejects her previous life with few relapses. Claudette understands the education being presented to her but resists adapting fully, her hatred turning into apathy as she quietly accepts her fate. Mirabella either does not comprehend her education, or fully ignores it, as she continually breaks the rules and boundaries set around her, eventually resulting in her removal from the school.
...self exaggerated stories. One thing she tells herself is that her mother was kidnapped by a lunatic. On another occasion a classmate asks where her mother is and she says that her mother is on a business trip in London. Their similarities help each other to grow and mature and eventually come to terms with their situations.
Instead of providing a safe and loving environment for her daughter, she built up anger towards her and eventually lashed out, physically and emotionally abusing her. Mary carries resentment towards Precious because Carl preferred having sex with Precious rather than Mary. The resentment continued and progressively became more aggressive as the movie went on. Child abuse is a major social issue in not only the United States but all over the world. Cases of child abuse and neglect that involve black children are reported and are approximately twice that of the cases that involve white children. This film sheds light on negative social issues that occur in young African- American children lives, and how these characters within this movie gained power and ultimately decide to peruse a positive life for themselves. Out of the 7.4 billion people in this world, forty million children are abused each year; that is only the amount of reported cases and does not include unreported cases. In the United States, a child is abused every ten seconds. Abuse typically leads to an unsuccessful life, despite your race or ethnicity. Statically speaking, child abuse victims have a 38% increase arrest rate for violent crimes; and 84% of all prison inmates had been abused as a child. As her mother beats her; Precious dreams of a better life and eventually takes the necessary steps to achieve that dreamed about life. The director
Precious, a movie based on the book Push written by Sapphire, is an interesting movie directed by Lee Daniels. Precious can be easily analyzed using basic motivation and emotion theories in psychology. The movie is about Claireece "Precious" Jones and how she becomes a strong, independent woman after breaking through her curse of physical and sexual abuse which she has endured since she was three months old. At the beginning, Precious is physically and verbally abused by her mother. In addition, Precious was raped by her father multiple times and impregnated twice. After being kicked out of her school because she was pregnant, Precious willingly joins the Each One Teach One alternative school so she can improve her reading and writing skills while, eventually, taking care of her two children. After some guidance from her teacher, Ms. Blu Rain, Precious starts feeling safe and starts to love herself and others around her. A lot of the behaviors in the movie can be easily explained by biological needs, psycho-social needs, and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Most people have experienced some form of violence in their family. Many of these dramatic events involve children becoming victims of abuse. In the movie “Precious” an African American sixteen year old female is tormented by her parents. Precious is the victim of several different form of abuse including: sexual, neglect, psychological, and physical. She is pregnant with her second child, both her children biological parent is her own father, who constantly rapes her. Precious’s mother is envious of her daughter because of the sexual relationship he has with his daughter. This creates conflict among them resulting in physical and psychological abuse. Precious escapes from realty by imaging herself as a glamourous star. With the help of her