I loved the film Precious. I think. My feelings about this very important film are passionate and ambivalent because of the manner in which it reinforces all the too-familiar colorist stereotypes. There’s a low-level ground war raging in me about the film. I’m still trying to determine if the raw beauty of the radiant performance by Gabourey Sidibe in the title role playing a young female victim of incest, illiteracy and physical abuse is neutralized by the just as disturbing direct and indirect equation throughout the film of beauty, compassion, and courage with light skin.

Not since the film adaptation of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer-Prize winning novel The Color Purple, has a movie sparked so much controversy and inspired such absolutely love the film or absolutely hate the film and just the idea of the film emotions. I found much in Precious absolutely breath-taking-the way that Sibide owns and lights up the screen from the very first frame. Even as we watch her victimization at the hands of a monstrous mother and evil father, we feel her vulnerability and her intelligence, and we know that somehow this child will make it. I found the recurring fantasies that filled Precious’ thoughts and imagination (looking in the mirror and seeing a blonde White girl rather than her own image, being loved and pursued by a light skinned “pretty boy”), painfully authentic and the expected survivalist daydreams of a very dark-skinned Black girl surrounded daily by a relentless stream of White supremacist images, and crippled by self loathing, poverty and unspeakable abuse. I applauded the affirming sisterhood that blossomed among Precious and the girls in her literacy class where they learned to read and write and simultaneously grew in their ability to feel and express compassion, concern and tenderness for one another.

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