Sapphire’s Literary Breakthrough

Chapter 1 Introduction: PUSHing Boundaries, PUSHing Art

Chapter 2 Sapphire’s PUSH: Locating Safe Sites for Writing and Personal Transformation

Chapter 3 “Bombs Cost More Than Welfare”: Rethinking “Responsibility” in Sapphire’s PUSH

Chapter 4 Multiple Oppressions, “Multiple Consciousness,” and the Spirit of Harriet Tubman in Sapphire’s PUSH

Chapter 5 “Spiky Green Life”: Environmental, Food, and Sexual Justice Themes in Sapphire’s PUSH

Chapter 6 Un-“Freak”ing Black Female Self: Grotesque-Erotic Agency and Ecofeminist Unity in Sapphire’s PUSH

Chapter 7 Sapphire’s PUSH for Erotic Literacy and Black Girl Sexual Agency

Chapter 8 Awakening to Self-Love in PUSH: Understanding the Significance of Sapphire’s Harlem

Chapter 9 Looking for “the Alternative [s] ”: Locating Sapphire’s PUSH in African American Literary Tradition through Literacy and Orality

Chapter 10 Deconstructing the “Pedagogy of Abuse”: Teaching Child Sexual Abuse Narratives

Chapter 11 “Rock the Motherfucking House”: Guiding a Study of Sapphire’s PUSH

Chapter 12 Why Does Precious Have to Lighten Up or Shuffle? Teaching with Lee Daniels’s “Adaptation”

Chapter 13 PUSHing to Precious: A Compilation and Annotation of Works by and about Sapphire