‘Telling Your Story Git You over that River’: AIDS and Scenes of Reading and Writing in Sapphire’s Push

Abstract

Sapphire’s Push (1996) presents the story of Precious, a victim of father incest and mother abuse, and her attempts to surmount these ordeals through the acquisition of literacy, particularly through writing and reading. Scripting her own life enables Precious to refashion herself and come to terms with her traumatized life. By reassembling her psychic ordeals through writing/reading, Precious generates a healing narrative and emerges as an incest survivor. Given the effectiveness of scriptotherapy in healing psychological exigencies, this paper, by means of a close reading of Push, explores the liberative potential of literacy and further demonstrates how literacy enables Precious, at least temporarily, to reconcile with her traumatic past and oppressive present to forge a meaningful future.

Keywords:

• Incest
• AIDS
• Literacy
• Healing
• African-American Women
• Wellness
• Sapphire
• Trauma