Wy me?

In this chapter Precious asks her teacher a question, “wy Me?” (Why me) (89), and this question is one that is running through the readers mind. The narrative voice that is used in this novel is one that has a big impact on the reader. We watch Precious take this journey, and we get to see what is going on in her mind, her dreams, her terrors, and her reality. This narrative voice makes Precious more real to us, and everything she is going through. I constantly find myself asking why her, and why so many others. How is this allowed to go on in society, and why is she allowed to fall through the cracks. It really sheds light on the situations and horrors that some people go through. With Precious it’s not just one thing, it is awful things one after the other, being raped by her father at age 7, abused by her mother, getting AIDS because of her father raped her, these things that happen to her are horrendous. If just one of these things had happened we would still find it awful, but here she is having all of these things happen to her and she is only 16, and so she is truly wondering, why her…why did it have to be that way. Precious is a person that hasn’t given up yet, even with all of these terrible things that have happened to her, so I believe that she is a character that one day will stop asking “why me” and just continue on with her life as a strong woman.

One can already see that Precious has started to undergo the transformation to make her a strong woman.  When her mother comes and visits her, the interactions between Precious and her mom are much different than before. Her mom came to tell her that her father died of AIDS meaning Precious probably had it as well. Now that Precious's father is dead, her mother seems to have had a change of heart about Precious and her children; Precious's mom was ready to welcome them back in her home.  Precious rejected her mother and showed her that she was in control of the situation "I home here.Well I guess i better go see 'bout Abdul 'n do homework."(87) Precious just walks away from her mother, just like before. Here Precious has a sense of independence and control over her own life. She takes care of Abdul, is going to school and getting more of an education than she ever has before. If she left and went back home she would lose her independence and life would go back to as it was before. Precious's semi-independence is helping her gain a better sense of her identity leading to her becoming a strong woman. 

Push blog 1

In the past narrative’s that we have read we talked about how a slave was made, how a master was made, and how whites and blacks were conditioned to live. In this novel we see how Precious is conditioned as a slave, but to her parents. Her father and mother sexually use her whenever they please (12). Her mother also beats her for no reason at all, and controls her down to the food she eats (20). We discussed one of the ways that slave masters kept control of their slaves was through ignorance, and Precious is kept in the dark just as these slaves were. Precious is conditioned to believe that she is dumb, “ I wanna say I ain’ stupid but I know I am…” (14). Precious actually believes that she is no one, and that she is dumb. She is kept in the dark because she is stuck with her mother. Her mother controls everything that she does, and she has to get past her mother in order to become free. Precious knows that she has to get an education in order to get a job and to get out of her mother’s house, and that is what she wants the most. Precious knows what is happening to her isn’t right, but she can’t escape it. Hopefully with her want for education, she will get it, and she will be able to escape the horrors of her own home.

Precious wants to escape the horrors of her own home in order to create and identity for herself. So far, she has no true identity that she lives by. Her family situation controls her identity and by escaping she will be able to form a separate identity. Something interesting about her identity thus far is how others see her identity. Not only is she looked at by her race, as shown in our other books, but by other factors. Her education status, age, socio-economic standing, weight and sexuality are how other people also judge her identity. They see a 16 year old girl that is still in junior high, pregnant with her second child and is extremely overweight. She is 'feared" by others at school, hated by her mother at home, sexually abused by her father all of which help lead to her confusion about her own identity.