SOURCE: "Don't Nobody Want Me. Don't Nobody Need Me," in The New York Times Book Review, July 7, 1996, p. 9.

[Below, Mahoney calls Push "an affecting and impassioned work that sails on the strength of pure, stirring feeling."]

Intrepid will and raw intelligence ring forth in Claireece Precious Jones, the narrator of Push, the poet and performance artist Sapphire's first novel. Precious, as she prefers to be called, is a teenager in Harlem during the 1980's, and the numerous violations she has withstood in her young life have left her bereft of resources, utterly lacking in self-command and virtually unable to communicate. Black, poor, angry, profoundly illiterate, notably fat, rejected, enslaved by the cruel and violent mother she lives with, raped repeatedly by her father since she was a first grader and now, at the age of 16, pregnant by him for the second time. Precious Jones may have only one...