Fifteen years after the publication of Push, one year after the Academy Award-winning film adaptation, Sapphire gives voice to Precious’s son, Abdul.

The Kid bestselling author Sapphire tells the electrifying story of Abdul Jones, the son of Push’s unforgettable heroine, Precious.

A story of body and spirit, rooted in the hungers of flesh and of the soul, The Kid brings us deep into the interior life of Abdul Jones. We meet him at age nine, on the day of his mother’s funeral. Left alone to navigate a world in which love and hate sometimes hideously masquerade, forced to confront unspeakable violence, his history, and the dark corners of his own heart, Abdul claws his way toward adulthood and toward an identity he can stand behind.

In a generational story that moves with the speed of thought from a Mississippi dirt farm to Harlem in its heyday; from a troubled Catholic orphanage to downtown artist’s lofts, The Kid tells of a twenty- first-century young man’s fight to find a way toward the future. A testament to the ferocity of the human spirit and the deep nourishing power of love and of art, The Kid chronicles a young man about to take flight. In the intimate, terrifying, and deeply alive story of Abdul’s journey, we are witness to an artist’s birth by fire.

”Come on, little man, your mommy’s traveling. I want you to hold her hand,” the doctor says to terrified 9-year-old Abdul as he stands at his mother’s deathbed.

It’s a heartrending scene — not just because readers know and love his mother, 
Precious, but it’s already apparent that the little boy has no one else in the world to care for him.

Sure enough, after the funeral Abdul 
is shunted into an 
appalling foster-care situation (where he’s beaten so brutally that the ensuing concussion lands him in the hospital for weeks) and then to a Catholic orphanage where he’s repeatedly raped and abused — and where, by the time he’s 14, Abdul is raping and abusing younger boys himself.

Sapphire is a gifted writer, and she depicts the transformation from victim to predator with chilling horror. The Kid is not easy to read — 
in fact, you will probably have to keep putting it down — but what happens to disenfranchised kids like Abdul isn’t pretty. The system that’s meant to serve them often doesn’t. And yet. There’s just no glimmer of humanity left in Abdul’s soul. Even after he tries to 
redeem himself through dancing, just as his mother used writing as a lifeline, it’s nearly impossible to empathize with him. You won’t like Abdul. You won’t care about him. But you won’t be able 
to stop thinking about him, either.

Synamatiq.com highly recommends you read this book, go buy it. 

:: JR§