Sapphire

Sapphire (born Ramona Lofton, 4 August 1950) is an American novelist and poet whose novel Push (1996) is one of the most viscerally powerful and emotionally demanding works of American fiction published in the late twentieth century. Written in the first-person voice of Claireece “Precious” Jones — a sixteen-year-old Black girl in 1987 Harlem who is illiterate, obese, pregnant for the second time by her father, and abused by her mother — Push tells the story of a young woman learning to read and write, and through literacy, learning to exist as a person. The novel was adapted into the film Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009), directed by Lee Daniels and starring Gabourey Sidibe, which won two Academy Awards and brought Precious’s story to a global audience.

Life

Sapphire was born at Fort Ord, a military base in California, and grew up on various Army posts. Her father was a career military officer; her childhood was marked by frequent moves and, by her own account, by instability and abuse. She studied dance and chemistry at City College of New York and earned an MFA from Brooklyn College.

In the 1980s, she worked as a literacy teacher and reading specialist in Harlem and the Bronx, teaching basic reading and writing to teenagers and adults who had been failed by the New York City public school system. These students — their voices, their struggles, their determination — became the raw material of her fiction. She has described the experience of teaching literacy to a teenage mother who could not read her own child’s name as the direct inspiration for Push.

Before writing fiction, Sapphire was known as a performance poet in the New York spoken-word scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Her poetry collection American Dreams (1994) — graphic, confrontational, sexually explicit — established her as a voice willing to go where most writers would not.

Push (1996)

The novel is written entirely in Precious’s voice — a voice that begins nearly illiterate (“Sometimes I wish I was dead”) and develops, over the course of the book, into something approaching articulate self-expression. The narrative arc is simple and devastating: Precious, who has been raped repeatedly by her father (she has already given birth to one child by him, a daughter with Down syndrome), enrolls in an alternative school where a teacher named Ms. Rain teaches her to read and write in a journal. Through writing, Precious begins to construct a self — to name what has happened to her, to imagine a future, and to claim an identity that is not defined entirely by her victimisation.

The novel’s power comes from the voice. Sapphire’s rendering of Precious’s language — its misspellings, its phonetic approximations, its gradual acquisition of fluency — is a technical achievement of the first order. The reader watches literacy happen on the page, and the effect is profoundly moving. The novel also refuses comfort: Precious’s circumstances do not magically improve. She discovers she is HIV-positive. Her mother is monstrous. The social systems that are supposed to protect her — welfare, schools, child protective services — have failed catastrophically. The novel ends not with rescue but with the beginnings of agency: Precious can read, she can write, and she can begin to tell her own story.

Push was controversial from publication. Some critics found it exploitative — a catalogue of horrors designed to provoke sympathy rather than understanding. Others argued that its graphic depictions of sexual abuse and its unflinching portrayal of poverty were necessary and that the novel’s power lay precisely in its refusal to look away. The book found a passionate readership, particularly among educators and social workers, and was widely taught.

Precious (2009)

The film adaptation, directed by Lee Daniels and produced by Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry, was a critical and commercial sensation. Gabourey Sidibe’s performance as Precious and Mo’Nique’s performance as her mother (which won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress) brought the novel to millions of new readers. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and two Oscars. It also reignited the debates about the novel’s representation of Black poverty and female suffering.

The Kid (2011)

Sapphire’s second novel follows Abdul, Precious’s son, from childhood in foster care through adolescence in Harlem. The novel is darker and more experimental than Push — Abdul’s world is even more violent, and the narrative structure is more fragmented. Critical reception was mixed: some reviewers praised its ambition; others found it exhausting and gratuitously violent. The novel has not achieved the readership or cultural impact of Push.

Critical Standing

Push is a landmark of late twentieth-century American fiction — a novel that gave voice to a person whom American literature had almost entirely ignored. Its influence on subsequent novels about poverty, abuse, and marginalised voices is significant. Sapphire’s reputation rests on one book, and it is a formidable one.

Collecting Sapphire

Push (1996, Knopf) in first edition with dust jacket brings $50–$150. The book was not a major bestseller at publication — its readership grew gradually and then exploded with the film — so early copies are not common. Signed copies bring $100–$300. American Dreams (1994, High Risk Books) in first edition brings $30–$60. The Kid (2011, Penguin) brings $10–$25.