V's Pick #37: Push by Sapphire

Reading Push is kind of like when your guy friend shows you some foreign porn he's downloaded from the internet for shock value. It's not sexy, it's hardly even sexual, it's hard to digest and even harder to forget...the images burned in your once-innocent brain making you wish for an "un-know" switch to wipe the slate.

I picked up this book at Walmart of all places. My dad landed himself an ambulance ride due to a back injury and I needed a car charger for my iPhone so I could let people know what was going on while he was awaiting diagnosis. While waiting to check out, I found this book among about twenty different bibles, a handful of coloring books and the standard supermarket chick-lit. I'd been meaning to read it for a while and figured this would be the perfect opportunity to check it off my list while attempting to forget about my own worries for a little while. I also found it a much needed break from the academic articles I'd been speed-reading for my thesis work and so dove right in with little hesitation.

Beyond the story itself, I must say, I'm kind of proud of Walmart for stocking this book. I can't buy a can of spray paint without being carded yet I can pick this harrowing and disgusting story of struggle up without so much as an eye-blink in my direction. I'm sure most of you have read this and/or seen the movie (the later of which I haven't done yet), not to mention, Blythe's post about it a few months ago was fantastic...so I'll skip the plot-synposis in this entry. I will say that I feel it moved me on the most deep level as an educator. The last set of classes I taught I used what's considered the "literacy model" of teaching college writing, meaning, the content of the course is writing based and focuses on the study of literacy. This book would have fit in perfectly and while I'm not sure what approach I'm going to take to my classes in the Fall, I'm considering making this book some part of what we look at when we discuss the power of writing. For the little time we have in a semester and because I teach writing, not literature, I don't think I would assign the whole book...but the idea that silence in writing occurs when people are unable to voice their stories is never more clear than in Push. In addition, I think teaching some of this book from a writing standpoint could serve as a serious wake-up call for some of the more cookie-cutter and coddled students I run into. Push is an excellent example of why we need to be aware of the way others live for it helps us to understand ourselves and how we can or cannot push or be pushed...