Author and poet Sapphire writes about overcoming adversity, empowerment, and the transformative power of literacy. Her award-winning novel, Push, telling the story of an illiterate, brutalized Harlem teenager, was named one of the top 25 books of 1996 by the Village Voice and adapted into the Academy Award-winning film Precious, produced by Oprah Winfrey. As A. O. Scott writes in the New York Times, “Just as Push achieves an eloquence that makes it far more than a fictional diary of extreme dysfunction, so too does Precious avoid the traps of well-meaning, preachy lower-depths realism. It howls and stammers, but it also sings.” Sapphire’s new novel, The Kid, tells the story of Abdul Jones, the son of Push’s unforgettable heroine, Precious.