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The first collection focused on the writing of provocative author and performance artist Sapphire, including her groundbreaking novel PUSH that has since become the Academy-award-winning film Precious.

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Introduction: PUSHing Boundaries, PUSHing Art PART I: TRANSFORMATIONAL REPRESENTATIONS 1. Sapphire´s PUSH : Locating Safe Sites for Writing and Personal Transformation; Lynette D. Myles 2. ´Bombs Cost More than Welfare´: Rethinking ´Responsibility´ in Sapphire´s PUSH ; Toni Fellela 3. Multiple Oppressions, ´Multiple Consciousness,´ and the Spirit of Harriet Tubman in Sapphire´s PUSH ; Barbara McCaskill PART II: BODY AND PLACE 4. ´Spiky Green Life´: Environmental Justice Themes in Sapphire´s PUSH ; Joni Adamson 5. Un-´Freak´ing Black Female Self: Grotesque-Erotic Agency and Ecofeminist Unity in Sapphire´s PUSH ; Elizabeth McNeil 6. Sapphire´s PUSH for Erotic Literacy and Black Girl Sexual Agency; L. H. Stallings 7. Awakening to Self-Love in PUSH : Understanding the Significance of Sapphire´s Harlem; Wilfred D. Samuels PART III: PEDAGOGY AND THE ACADEMY 8. Looking for ´the Alternative[s]´: Locating Sapphire´s PUSH in African American Literary Tradition through Literacy and Orality; DoVeanna S. Fulton Minor 9. Deconstructing the ´Pedagogy of Abuse´: Teaching Child Sexual Abuse Narratives; Elizabeth McNeil 10. ´Rock the Motherfucking House´: Guiding a Study of Sapphire´s PUSH ; Neal A. Lester 11. Why does Precious have to Lighten Up or Shuffle? Teaching with Lee Daniels´s ´Adaptation´; Christopher Burrell and James Wermers PART IV: ENGAGING THE WORK, ENGAGING THE WRITER 12. PUSH ing to Precious: A Compilation and Annotation of Works by and about Sapphire; Eric Parks

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DoVeanna S. Fulton is Chair and Associate Professor of the Department of Gender and Race Studies at the University of Alabama.

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