SOURCE: "Living Hell," in Chicago Tribune—Books, July 21, 1996, p. 3.

[In the review below, Obejas briefly outlines the themes in Push, praising Sapphire's portrayal of inner-city life.]

Push is a story about hell.

It's about Precious Jones, a 16-year-old girl whose life is damned before she's even born. It's about economic and spiritual poverty, about violence and incest, about ignorance and prejudice, pregnancy and AIDS and death. It's the kind of story that gets more intense and infernal with every page.

Yet the miracle of Push is that, even at its most devastating, it is also a story about faith and possibility, about the way even the most scarred and scabbed human beings can respond to the lightest touch of love.

Written by Sapphire, a black poet best known for American Dreams, a book-length prose poem, Push is a quick 179 pages that often read like a slammer's angry verse...