Life Stories: Class Book
Shane Wilson
The final portion of Precious concludes with a compiling of stories and poems written by Precious and her classmates. Each one is different and special to each individual author but at the same time each person faces many hardships growing up. Its interesting to learn about what Precious's classmates endured because until now you only knew their names. Race is quite apparent in each story and throughout this novel as a whole. One of the lines in Rita's story My Life is very subtle but if you dissect it, it becomes one of her more powerful lines throughout her entire story. Rita is talking about her apartment with her parents and says, "The shades is drawn. Whats inside is prettier, outside is just a brick wall." This quote said to me that Rita feels whats inside is much prettier than what is outside, like a personality of someone. Also the fact that she says the outside is a brick wall says to me that Rita is tough on the outside but it also says to me that Rita feels like just another brick wall and almost so generic to her surroundings . I think this is important because Rita has a feeling of just being like a " Brick Wall" on the outside but everything on the inside is much prettier.
Another topic that is discussed is religion in Jermaine's story. It talks about how how her mother is left with very little but the bible and her kids. Jermaine's mother preaches to the people on the train " Hell you are all going to hell! Unless you accept the word of gods only son JEEZUSS!!" If you are preaching this hard about the bible and its preachings than you must be quite the advocate of it in which case Jermaine's mother cannot be fine with her being a lesbian. You can see here that Jermaine's mother does not approve of this sinister act, " when she walks in on me and Mary-Mae fucking. Can't she see that we're in love? no, she can't. She starts foaming at the mouth screaming curses in the name of god". Race, ethnicity and religion are very touchy subjects in many families because in some cases, like that of Jermaines, religion is all they have left. It is tough to ever say that beatings, rapes and mistreatments of minorities by minorities will ever change, but is it still possible that it could?
Shane, the part of this that stuck out to me was your focus on Rita and her situation with race. I agree with your saying how she views herself on the outside. I think this is a theme throughout the whole book with a lot of the characters. Precious clearly has this same thought process. Harlem seems to cause this in an even more heightened sense. The people living there grow up believing the color of their skin is the cause of their difficult life.
ReplyDelete-Jordan
I find it interesting that you chose to dissect that quote by Rita. It's a line that I didn't even pick up on as I read, but as you have shown it is very significant. As related to race, saying "Whats inside is prettier" could be a metaphor related to the insignificance of skin color. Also, I think it is interesting that religion is brought up so late in the book, because until this point I don't think it has had much of a role in the story. It's ironic that the most religious figure in the book, Jermaine's mother, has a homosexual daughter.
ReplyDelete-Amanda
I agree with what everyone has said. I didn't look to deep into what Rita said while I read the final chapter, but when you notice the deeper meaning behind it it really is a big theme throughout the book with just Precious, but now you see it with Rita, the rest of her classmates, and minorities who feel self conscious through the judgement and hate they get for being who they are.
ReplyDelete-Nick
Shane, I really liked how you went in detail about Rita, she seemed like a great supporting character but this story makes you think more about her life and what she went through. i think that Sapphire purposely left out the adult lives of the characters to make the readers think more critically of what they had gone through in stead of what they turned into from their life situations.
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