Long Day’s Journey into Night: Reading Push, Watching Precious | Racialiciou...
moya
Sent to you by moya via Google Reader:
Before reading Push, I braced myself and prepared for depression. Before heading to see Precious, I packed three travel sized packs of kleenex. But the unrelenting despair I was warned about never quite materialized. Instead, I saw hope.
Crazy right?
Hope was the last thing I was expecting when I checked out this story. After all, I had published SLB’s essay/post “Reveling in Bleakness,” and every time I announced something about Precious, one of my readers would plug Percival Everett’s Erasure. Reading any of my online feeds was a race and class related cacophony, and I hadn’t even touched a page.
Last Thursday, I settled in for what I thought would be an extremely painful and devastating read…or, worse, something so disgusting and exploitative that I would reject it outright as poverty pimping. But neither of these things happened.
Instead, I fell headlong into the alternately horrific and hilarious world of Precious Jones, one that was both familiar to me and strange at the same time. I enjoyed Precious’ rapid fire thoughts, found her casual allegiance to Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam interesting, and watched her openness to the world, even as she was limited by circumstances. I understand the impulse that many would have to cringe at much of the piece – the world painted is tangled with dysfunction and pain, and graphic depictions of sexual and physical violence aren’t for the feint of heart. But again, I read the novel dry-eyed. Perhaps I didn’t have any tears left to shed for Precious.
excerpted via Long Day’s Journey into Night: Reading Push, Watching Precious | Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture.
Things you can do from here:
- Subscribe to Raven's Eye using Google Reader
- Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites