A Politics of Emotion in Sapphire’s Push

• Published in: Institute of British and American Studies Vol. 44; pp. 27 - 64
• Main Author: Lee, Sun-Jin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 영미연구소 30.10.2018
• Subjects: 학제간연구
• DOI: 10.25093/jbas.2018.44.27
• ISSN: 2508-4135

This paper examines the emotional dimension of the protagonist/narrator Precious’s embodied experiences of oppression and empowerment in Sapphire’s novel Push (1996) by drawing upon an intersectional framework that aims to investigate and redress complex social inequalities and injustices shaped by intersecting axes of power and upon Sara Ahmed’s model of sociality of emotion. It first analyzes the ways in which multiple oppressions Precious suffers in various social institutions such as family, school, and welfare system operate through the emotions of hatred and self-hatred. In so doing, it demonstrates that Precious’s self-hatred against for being a poor black woman is the effect of the intersecting power systems of race, gender, and class that constitute Precious as an object of hatred. Based on an assumption that emotion factors in agency as it affects bodily capacity to act, the paper then focuses on the transformation of Precious’s emotions from self-hatred to self-love as she moves from victimhood toward agency by joining an alternative school to learn how to read and write. It argues that through new encounters with women of color at the school does Precious begin to unlearn her deeply seated self-hatred and to learn how to love herself and others. Developed by not only sharing their lived experiences of marginalization and violence against their race, gender, class, and sexuality but also by building a learning community of mutual support and love, Precious’s self-love is her growing power of understanding of herself and the world surrounding her and of acting upon that newly gained knowledge. Through Precious’s story, the novel emphasizes the importance of both interrogating how such systems of social inequalities as racism, sexism, and classism intersect in oppressing African American women and women of color like Precious by listening to their silenced stories and recognizing how they assert and exert their agency to resist against those intersecting systems of oppression. KCI Citation Count: 0