Book Review: The Kid by Sapphire
Image via Borders.com
Today, I’m over at Gender Across Borders reviewing The Kid by Sapphire.
This review contains spoilers, so if you think you might read the book and you hate spoilers, do not read past the cut! Also, I’m including a trigger warning for this post, and the book, for descriptions of sexual abuse, violence, and hate speech.
I was approached by BlogHer to review The Kid by Sapphire for their reviews program (and you will be able to read all of the BlogHer reviews – including mine, which is different than this one – very soon!), and, even though I hadn’t read Push, the prequel novel, nor had I seen the film adaptation Precious (I have read quite a bit about the two, but, since I’m an English teacher, I can’t bring myself to count that.), I had planned on reading and watching them respectively, so I didn’t want to pass up this opportunity. In a way, I’m glad I had the opportunity to read the book, and in a way, I’m not. Frankly, I did not enjoy reading The Kid, and after this experience, I doubt I will pick up the prequel anytime soon.
When I was student teaching, my supervising professor used to say, de gustibus non disputandum est – you can’t argue taste. This was to remind us that, while we couldn’t make our students like a book we assigned, we could ask them to tell us why they didn’t like it, which was a great critical response. As I stated above, I did not necessarily like The Kid, though I don’t think entertainment was Sapphire’s goal with this novel. However, the content was more problematic than just being difficult to read.
Just a reminder, do not proceed past this point if you don’t want to read spoilers or descriptions of sexual abuse, violence, and hate speech.
But if you are interested in reading on, click here to read the rest!
