Of Push, Precious, Percival, and “My Pafology”
I also tend to get super defensive in these discussions because, in essence, people (not you, the mass of reviews I’ve waded through) are saying that me and my family either (1) are black stereotypes, (2) too dysfunctional to be believed, (3) the “real” black life. None of these things are inherently false or true, and that’s what keeps getting lost in these convos.
I agree with your point about bleakness – do you think it might be the street lit boom exerting some influence on literature? I read Erasure last night, and while I enjoyed the book, I felt like Everett misfired at Push – his point is made by The Coldest Winter Ever much better than Push, and the “My Pafology” parody is about a nihilistic rapist, a far cry away from the introspective Precious. I am not surprised – sometimes in our rush to distance ourselves from anything negative, or “detrimental to the race” we can miss a lot of cues of realism. I loved how Precious parrots Nation of Islam ideology as a way to stay strong in the face of hardship. I also love how she later rejects many of the flawed ideas she learned once she outgrows them. But that kind of nuance is almost never discussed, perhaps because people don’t recognize it for what it is. They see someone speaking “improper” English and can’t be bothered to parse the content of the sentences.
Upon further reflection, I’ll even argue that The Coldest Winter Ever deserves a bit more credit. Instead, My Pafology reads a lot like much of the street lit we’ve discussed before. And yet, I feel like that nuance doesn’t matter. Negative is negative is negative, regardless of how it is used and to what end.
There are many things overlooked in critiques of Push/Precious, one of which is the frank discussion of incest. As many readers here and at Jezebel pointed out, many of the reviews kind of waltz over the continued sexual abuse by both father and mother. (Something else that is never mentioned is Precious’ horror that her body reacts when she is being raped – something that her father uses as a justification that she “likes” it.) And I wonder why this is being dismissed. Would it have been okay to discuss the incest if the narrator was different, the situation was different? Like this?
“So,” Jack said after we’d settled into the pine-and-leather booth. “How was your day?”
“Fine. I, um, did some laundry, went to the book store —”
“Oh yeah? What’s you get?”
“Oh this psychobabble thing I’d been wanting to read.”
“What?”
“It’s called The Drama of the Gifted Child.”
“Uh-huh. What’s it about?”
“Oh, I don’t know, just stuff about your childhood and how you’re affected by it.”
“Mmm. So, did you have some childhood trauma?”
It was an interesting way of putting it, and I didn’t quite know how to answer. Trauma seemed so big a word, as if I’d have to have been a survivor of a war or a pawn in a horrible divorce. I was neither, but my childhood pain felt just as large. I realized this was an opportunity to tell him about Lucas, but it was too soon to spill such pain. On the other hand, I could give him a peek at my baggage to give him a chance to run if he couldn’t deal.
“Um, well, nothing catastrophic.” I let the moment pass.
The excerpt above is from Benilde Little’s Good Hair, one of my favorite books. Good Hair is often described as “a black comedy of manners,” and focuses on Alice Andrews, a Newark-born Manhattanite who is having problems finding her place in a class conscious society. Is her story more valid than the one of Precious Jones, because Andrews’ world uses proper English, is college educated, and everyone has a career?
On of the things that grates on me so about the discussions around the work is the lack of analysis of the underlying content. I’ve read lots of street lit, mostly because I make a habit of reading what others around me read. And I have lots of issues with street lit on both a systemic level and a content level. But while I was reading through My Pafology, I realized that while it is a direct response to Push (some similarities is narrative and tone, and some of the same words – like “down sinder” for “down’s syndrome” – are used), it appears that Everett missed the point. He interprets it as a glorification of hood life, and not a character narrative.
Page 2 of 3 | Previous page | Next page