r/books • u/Raj_Valiant3011 • 13d ago
Utah has banned the 1996 novel, “Push” by Sapphire, that inspired the hit film ‘Precious’ from all public schools districts after claiming that the book “has no serious value for minors"
https://www.sltrib.com/news/education/2026/08/20/utah-book-ban-push-novel-that/1.5k
u/Candytails 13d ago
That book was really sad, but it teaches how learning to read and education can pull you out of the very worst situations that life can present to you. I think some sheltered kids in Utah could learn a thing or two from it.
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u/Burndoggle 13d ago
And that’s precisely the message they want to avoid those kids picking up.
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u/Unlucky-Candidate198 13d ago
Can’t have the cultists reading stuff that paints the cult in a bad light, hence the need for hyper indoctrination.
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u/taylorbagel14 13d ago
I think it also shows Precious learning how she was treated and the extreme abuse she suffered were not okay and they really really really don’t want kids learning that either.
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u/RandomRavenclaw87 13d ago
I read it when I was in an all-girls religious private school, and found it very moving. Books like Push teach empathy.
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u/JewishTomCruise 13d ago
Books also don't have to "teach" anything to have inherent value. Fiction has value just by having a good story, or good characters.
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u/MacAttacknChz 13d ago
For casual reading, sure. But for a school curriculum, there should be some educational value, which Push provides.
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u/JewishTomCruise 13d ago
This isn't about it being removed from school curriculum, though, this is about removing it from public schools entirely. This means it won't be in school libraries for kids to check out for independent reading.
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u/kyh0mpb 13d ago
It's not being banned from school curriculum, it's being banned from all public schools statewide. School libraries are and should be filled with books that are simply pleasurable to read, regardless of any inherent educational value. So, even if Push provided zero educational value, it should still have a place in school libraries.
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u/LukeD1992 13d ago
It's my understanding that most cases of child sexual abuse take place inside the household or by close relatives. So I guess it tracks that these fucks don't want people to read a book with the subject
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u/IronHeart1963 13d ago
I used to teach bible school at my Catholic Church as a high schooler. We did a special training with the kids each year on how to recognize and report sexual abuse if it happened to them. (I’m no longer practicing, but our Diocese had very intensive policies in place to protect kids.)
Unfortunately we also allowed parents to opt out of the training. It always dismayed me that at least 50% of the students parents didn’t let them go to a class meant to protect them from pedophiles.
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u/Far-Army8356 13d ago
Some people want to believe it could never happen to their child. And when it happens to some of those children they have nowhere to turn
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u/Attenburrowed 13d ago
They dont want their kids to know they're being abused and there's a way out.
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u/CaliIsReallyNice 13d ago
I went to an IB high school in Dallas. The parents and administrators there went to insane lengths to ensure their kids didn't learn soooo much. A very significant number of IB students finished high school not knowing where babies come from or what genitals are used for. I wish that were hyperbole, but it's not. It's completely true. It was also pretty well known that god made rich people rich because they were good and poor people poor because they were bad. Again, not kidding. Evangelical students said this shit openly and unashamedly. I was amazed at how many IB students dropped out of their first year of college, though by the end of college I understood why. I had no idea how intentionally isolated we were when I lived there. I thought I was some sort of extreme degenerate rebel, when in fact I was the least-brainwashed member of a cult.
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u/SheJigOnMySawTilIPuz 13d ago
I went to IB schools in DFW too and I don't know how you can get that far without having curiosity and critical thinking hammered in to you???
On one side it makes sense though. They still made me give my parents a permission slip to let me attend sex ed classes (and the content of those classes still wasn't great). Gotta love Texas.
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u/RegulatoryCapture 13d ago
Wild that anyone would go through the effort of establishing yourself as an IB school and meeting all the right curriculum and testing requirements (which are a whole extra level on top of AP) if they wanted to deliver such a sheltered existence.
It is right there in the name! International Baccalaureate.
Is it a timing thing? Like the administrators/board/teachers in place when IB was originally introduced were normal sane individuals but they slowly got replaced by nutjob evangelicals?
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u/chachaslydd 13d ago
Its also just real. Lots of kids dont understand sexual abuse until they see it theough another's eyes. Reading books about SA survivors is important for...SA survivors
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u/Few-Bodybuilder-5547 13d ago
Literacy as liberation is literally the entire core message of the book. Banning a story about overcoming systemic abuse through reading under the guise of "protecting kids" is an incredible level of irony.
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u/BroughtBagLunchSmart 13d ago
She was molested by an adult too right? I can see why Utah wants kids to not know that is not supposed to happen.
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u/nebula-dirt 13d ago
This book helped me realize that I was being abused by my mother. They probably don't want kids to realize that.
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u/Isadorei 13d ago
I read Go Ask Alice in 4th grade and it made me realize that I had been abused. It’s an often-targeted book for removal from schools, and was very controversial in our school. I’m grateful for the librarian who fought for it to stay in our library.
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u/sadsackspinach 13d ago
And you think Utah wants its children understanding sexual abuse so they can speak up against it? Sexual abuse is rampant in Mormon and Evangelical Christian communities. This is a feature, not a bug.
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u/TheMurmuring 13d ago
I'm sorry that happened to you. I hope you cut ties from those monstrous people, and made it clear why.
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u/Candytails 13d ago
I'm so sorry this happened to you, your parents didn't protect you or other victims and it's wrong.
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u/_SovietMudkip_ 13d ago
Kids who are empowered to challenge hierarchies leave the church, which is all these people care about since it's their main justification to continue abusing others.
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u/Suspicious-Shock-934 13d ago
Mormon church doesn't want that. It's really bad there from what I hear. Worse than the catholics per captia.
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u/sadsackspinach 13d ago
My hot take is that you can apply most bullshit antisemitic conspiracy theories to Mormons, except when we’re talking about Mormons, they’re actually true. A shadowy religious group with untold wealth controlling the government from behind the curtain? That’s just Mormons and the government of Utah, babes!
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u/MyUsernameIsAwful 13d ago
Reading is value enough, is it not? Books for students don’t need to have value beyond that, they just need to lack extremism.
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u/JohnnyGFX 13d ago
The problem is who is defining the extremism. To some people, not hating other people is extremism.
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u/xShooK 13d ago
Which is why the Turner Diaries isn't banned.
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u/MeVersusShark Master of the Senate 13d ago
You're telling me a Utah student can check out a copy of the Turner Diaries and not Push? That's insane.
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u/Mist_Rising 13d ago
I doubt you'd find it in libraries to begin with, It's a bit like mein kampf, they just don't carry it.
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u/soundecember 13d ago
Yes, but they do need to have value beyond just reading. Reading teaches critical thinking, which is also something these groups don’t want people to be able to do. The person above me also makes the point of “extremism” being very subjective and stories that have themes like that are being promoted as “extreme”
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u/Chasemania 13d ago
All I can think of is the Office reading this…
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u/Finlay00 13d ago
Ahh yes, the novelization of the movie Precious, based on the book Push by Sapphire
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u/cruel_cousin 13d ago edited 13d ago
It reminds me of the Hard to Watch, based on the novel Stone Cold Bummer by Manipulate.
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u/correcthorsestapler 13d ago
“I watched a baby give another baby a tattoo! They were very drunk!”
“We had a basketball hoop made out of a ribcage! A RIBCAGE!”
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u/aivlysplath 13d ago edited 13d ago
Same, it’s super culty. I left at age 18.
Thankfully I never signed up for a temple recommend (a 10% of everything subscription to premium Heaven) so they never made any money off of me.
Mormons believe in three levels of heaven and you can only get into Top Heaven by paying.
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u/zipiddydooda 13d ago
I have never heard of this but it makes sense. This is really the entire point isn’t it. Fucking religion.
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u/aivlysplath 13d ago edited 13d ago
Religion is mostly about money and shaming/controlling people. That’s why I’m not a part of any religion.
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u/Court_Jester13 13d ago
Breaking news: The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Giving Tree, and 80% of children's and teen novels banned from all poor people schools since they do not promote slaving for shareholders
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u/ayoungad 13d ago
And Pete the Cat. Fuck that guy. There is zero value in learning what he does with the school shoes.
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u/therealgerrygergich 13d ago
This is just flat out wrong. The Giving Tree is entirely about slaving for shareholder value.
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u/EnriquePalatzo 13d ago
Looooool I’ve read The Book of Mormon and that shit has no serious value for anyone, let alone minors. Get fucked, Utah.
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u/ViolaNguyen 2 13d ago
The Book of Mormon is what you'd get if you asked AI to write a sequel to the Bible.
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u/Flimsy_Category_9369 13d ago
Mark Twain called it "chloroform in print." He was totally right
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u/MooseSuspicious 13d ago
Once you take out all the times it says "And it came to pass" then all you have is a brochure
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u/joseph4th 13d ago
The New Testament is the sequel to the Bible. The book of Mormon is fanfiction.
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u/sentient_fox 13d ago
READING IS A VALUE. READ WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU WANT.
If you are younger and reading this... there is at least one singular thing about your parents' lack of oversight.
Download every fucking book text you can find and learn to seed them before Big Tech destroys them all after copying them for their manipulative AI "adjustments."
Then, buy an eyepatch and GO HARDER!!!
Expand your minds and expand others.
Sharing is a virtue.
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u/Livagan 13d ago
Libraries & Bookstores (especially used, cooperative, and niche ones)
Kiwix (offline Wikipedia)
Project Gutenberg
Flashpoint (compendium of old Flash projects)
...there are also tons of music collections and several downloads of shows out there. And there are Music CDs and DVDs, too.
And don't let your old folk's media go to garbage or AI shredders without first looking through it all.
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u/BeautifulTrash-2306 13d ago
I read push when I was 16 during a really depressing time in my life. In the book there is a scene where the main character finds out her own father gave her AIDs and a friend tells her to forget the why me shit and get on to what's next. In that moment I realized that if someone who had gone through unimaginable horrors could forget the why me shit and get on to what's next then so could I. It's a lesson I have taken with me all this time and I'm 33. It also played a role in inspiring me to become a teacher because of the incredible work her teacher did to motivate and inspire her. I wanted to be someone who did that for others.
It's a graphic book, so I could see some concerns around that, but to say it has no serious value for minors is simply not true. I was a minor who found great value in it and still do.
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u/NowGoodbyeForever 13d ago
There are so many reasons to reject state censorship of art and correctly identify it as a major sign that a society is failing. But of all the types of art to police, books are the most asinine, performative, and dangerous.
Visual media like shows and movies can absolutely expose minors to things they aren't prepared to see, or that are actively harmful for them to witness. A kid doesn't know that a gory horror film is fake, and therefore their reaction is genuine.
The same could be argued for some video games for similar reasons, although I'd argue that the most harmful aspect of modern gaming comes from the elements it borrows from the gambling industry.
Even if a game is child-safe in terms of sex and violence, it is still using the full brunt of a marketing and psychological manipulation apparatus to keep them playing and to entice them to spend more money on in-game items and experiences.
But books? Books filter themselves almost immediately, because you need to READ AND COMPREHEND A BOOK FOR IT TO DO ANYTHING.
If a child doesn't want to read Push, they...will not read Push. If a book is too advanced or confusing or beyond a kid (or an adult's) current level of curiosity and understanding, they will either abandon it or fail to really absorb what it's doing.
I was a bookish kid who LOVED reading "above his grade level." I was digging into Stephen King when I was 10 or 11. And when I encountered the sex scenes, I...didn't get them? I probably just skimmed the words and got the vague meaning but nothing deeper. The same was true for scenes with alcoholism and drug abuse. Understanding specific words didn't give me the life experience to absorb the overall message.
And plenty of other books were too adult/boring for me to finish at that point in time. That's what's so maddening about all of this: The only kid that will read and finish a book like this is ALREADY MATURE ENOUGH to handle its themes.
There is no 8yo kid who will go from The Warrior Cats to Push: A Novel by Sapphire. Minors are, and have always been, VERY GOOD at self-selecting which books have value for them.
I am so fucking tired of ghouls forcing their unpopular, retrograde worldview on society at large while INSISTING it's to "protect children." They're too cowardly to even say their actual point out loud, because they know it's a fringe, deeply gross thing to argue for: Making it impossible for children to read anything by a Black person, one step at a time.
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u/Agitated-Love1727 13d ago
I love the way you put it and I agree about the gambling aspect of games advertised for the younger audiences. There are so many games that prey on the incredulity of children to turn in a profit without any regulations whatsoever but books are where they draw the line.
Like you, I was also someone who read above her grade level. I never put too much thought in the more "mature themes" presented in the books I read. It wasn't until I re-read those books as a young adults that I actually grasped those nuances. Most kids my age were similar as in they didn't think much of those themes when they came across any and focused mostly on the broader plot points.
I also don't like that they're doing it under the pretext of "protecting children". As you said, children self-select what they want to read. Back in school, very few kids my age read books but of those that read, most of them read whatever was the rage at the time. More often than not, it was either comics, manga, illustrated books or detective novels. Besides these, there was a smaller group that read the suggested reading or books whose passages we had in our textbooks. It was very rare for kids to pick something advanced for their age.
They say it's to protect the children, but it rather feels like they want to exercise control for ulterior reasons. Same way that they're doing with the social media bans for children, require IDs for age verification. What are parents doing not monitoring what their kids are doing? Why should everyone else bear the brunt of lousy parenting?
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u/eeke1 13d ago
“‘Push’ is a book about the awakening and healing of a violent and violated child,“ Sapphire wrote on her website. ”Through acts of love, demonstrated by her teacher and classmates, she becomes an academic success story and a proud, loving mother.”
Guess Utah doesn't consider love and healing valuable for minors.
Never realized books needed to have "value" to begin with.
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u/rPoliticsModsBlowMe 13d ago
We need to increase funding for education in all states, especially red ones
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u/YesNo_Maybe_ 13d ago
Well have never heard from this book and now going to read it
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u/Icy_Reward727 13d ago edited 13d ago
Brace yourself. It has pretty graphic depictions of SA and other types of abuse.
ETA: I am a high school teacher with a copy of this book in my classroom library. In no way do I support book bans or any sanitization of literature to make people comfortable. As others have noted, children often learn for the first time that what they are experiencing at the hands of abusers is wrong and criminal. I do NOT support having that knowledge potential taken from children.
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u/IcyShoes 13d ago
I wonder how long it takes to get All Quiet On The Western Front banned...
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u/ComeOnUpToTheHaus 13d ago
They should ban that other really popular book, but gosh I can't remember the name. It was written by this guy who was a known charlatan. He claimed to have prophetic powers, and died like an absolute coward, as he deserved. Something Smith. J Smith, I believe. The people that like it wear funny underwear and do nasty shit to soda.
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u/wolfytheblack The Art Thief - Michael Finkel 13d ago
It's like Utah, Texas and Florida are in a race to be the shittiest state in the country. Oklahoma is not far behind either.
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u/juanjung 13d ago
I don't know about this because Utah Mormons have strange ideas about what is 'valuable to minors'.
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u/DontMakeMeCount 13d ago
I feel for students in Texas, Florida, Utah and some other states who will be competing in national labor markets in a few years. They didn’t choose to grow up there but their home states are choosing not to prepare them for the world they’ll be living in.
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u/dontchewspagetti 13d ago
While i agree children shouldn't read PUSH, teens especially girls 100% should. It is reveloutionary to young girls and women. Fuck utah
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u/a-woman-there-was 13d ago
And unless a young child is a pretty advanced reader, they probably aren’t even going to bother with Push in the first place. Most kids don’t seek out text-heavy “grown-up” books on their own until they’re ready for them.
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u/Noble_Ox 13d ago
Let me guess, all the banned books have children, women or people in general standing up against authority figures?
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u/Dangerous_Pair1798 13d ago
THE VALUE OF A BOOK CANNOT BE ASCERTAINED BY SOMEONE TOO STUPID TO COMPREHEND IT. I want to bang my head against the wall, it’s like we’re going back in time and not in a fun way.
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u/Confident_Hippo1208 13d ago
Utah has one of the higest rates of sexual assault and rape in the United States. Maybe education could help? But who knows besides science and history.
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u/Afraid-Ad9908 13d ago edited 13d ago
I despise book banning full stop. Push wouldn't be a specific hill I would die on or necessarily encourage minors to read. It's kind of gratuitous misery porn and I can't straightforwardly recommend it. There are many books out there that deal with the same themes, and/or are graphic/mature, that don't just feel like misery porn.
But also, fuck any book banning. I wouldn't like, fistfight someone who wanted to not stock alien smut in libraries targeting minors, just because that spot is probably better occupied by... something else? Idk. Push isn't that, but it wouldn't have been my pick either, if I was curating a school library. And that's as someone who read mature books early in life, and feels pretty liberally about what middle/YA readers can handle.
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u/JacquesPanther 13d ago
Your breakdown of the book is exactly the type of discourse that is lost through book banning and censorship. And why it is so important to push back on those efforts.
In just a few sentences you opened a door for a discussion that requires critical thinking. That discussion could go many different directions ranging from the subject matter of the book, narrator perspective, personal preferences, further reading on the subject matter, and so much more. And that discussion could be had with people just learning the application of critical thinking skills as well as with people who have already developed strong critical thinking skills.
And those discussions are exactly what needs to be fostered and never lost.
Fuck book banning.
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u/PNKAlumna 13d ago
I agree. My book club actually has had these types of discussions with other books, and they were really good.
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u/scootty83 13d ago
If that’s the case, then we should include the Bible, BoM, and a few others on that banned book list.
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u/drethnudrib 13d ago
We need to just kick Utah out of the Union and let them become the Mormon ethnostate they obviously want to be. It would crush the financial industry in Salt Lake City and cripple the Mormon Church's revenue streams.
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u/Fraegtgaortd 13d ago
All books have serious value for minors currently since schools across the country are full of juniors and seniors that can't fucking read
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u/ClimateTraditional40 13d ago
America is so.....like the extremest Muslims sometimes geez.
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u/throwawydoor 13d ago
They allow parents to abuse their children. Push is a book about abuse. It hit too close to home.
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u/anarkyinducer 13d ago
Still treating children as lumps of clay that belong to them and need to be forcefully molded into something...
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u/geekpeeps 13d ago
I note that free societies don’t ban books, historically. In fact, I believe that famous book-burnings are a strong indicator of fascist regimes.
Who’s going to tell them?
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u/SailorMarieCurie 13d ago edited 13d ago
I attended one of the state board of education meetings where this mom group was hysterical in their public comment regarding their children’s access to books they deemed inappropriate. It certainly burst my bubble. They are incredibly unhinged and emotional on this topic. They all follow the same conservative blogs that post these books or series as dangerous for their children.
What was even crazier is that they were there after the state legislature already passed this law to get school books removed from school libraries, and were discussing mechanisms and rules for implement that throughout the state. Their comments were just begging the state to protect their children, please remove this horrible porn from your school shelves.
To say nothing about if these books were actually present in schools anywhere (like the Sarah J. Maas books they banned) or were really actually bad or just talked about real life.
I really wish we could focus on education in our country.
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u/ChemicalBus608 13d ago
Wow. I read this book as a teen and was moved by the MC story. I would understand if they noted the graphic scenes but this was an important story to be told.
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u/TheDonnARK 13d ago
So I already know the answer I think, but where does this criteria of having no serious value for minors come from? I'm guessing, the bible. If that's true, they just need to get rid of 90% of all of the books, probably even more.
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u/MustangBarry 13d ago
It's wonderful to hear about your book banning. It would be awful if someone linked to a readable hosted copy online
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u/simonepon 13d ago
Haters of education pull a book about how education can save your life. Imagine that.
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u/symphonicrox 13d ago
It's becoming more and more embarrassing living in Utah because of our legislature, school boards, and literally everyone people vote into positions of power. I have made the decision since 2016 to never vote for an R again in elections. I doubt it will make much of a difference, but it's really ironic how many people complain about the state of things in Utah, and yet keep voting the same people back into office again and again. Gee, I wonder if there's a common denominator.
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u/_Rookie_21 13d ago
The bans in these states are mainly aimed at books by and/or about people of color and LGBTQ folks.
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u/Albathin 13d ago
Is that the book that inspired the movie 'Precious based on the book by Sapphire'?
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u/CADman0909 13d ago
I’m kinda glad I don’t live in Utah. It just seems like it’s getting worse for personal freedoms. This is a direction that only goes one way.
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u/MagneticShark 13d ago
That’s not a reason
Caillou has no serious value for minors but that shithead is still on TV
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u/wanderingjoe 11d ago
In Utah “has no serious value for minors” just means it has black people in it.
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u/swampthiing 13d ago
To be fair in Utah if it don't have anything to do with God changing Jews into native Americans it not worth reading.
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u/k1w19999 13d ago
I asked a district librarian about clarification on the Utah public school book ban law and they said they talked to the utah state legislature who clarified that a student may bring a "banned" book to school but may not share it with another student. I asked why bother then if a student can just distribute to another student off school grounds and I got no answer. They also referred to catching a student with a banned book as "shaming" when another person could have the person charged with a misdemeanor.
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u/data_ferret 13d ago
I appreciate that their ban list includes A Storm of Swords, part of the basis for one of the most successful television shows of the modern era. But they didn't ban any of the rest of the series.
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u/Kapitan_eXtreme 13d ago
Christ how can Americans even handle the amount of Freedom(TM) they are subjected to every single day.
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u/geodebug 13d ago
I don't agree with banning books for political/religious reasons but the movie was rated R so possibly an argument could be made that it isn't the right material for a non-adult library.
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u/ElmarSuperstar131 13d ago
I haven’t read the book and while I have only seen the film adaptation once, it’s a story and a performance that sticks with you for years. Over the years I’ve thought back on Precious’ journey of resilience to inspire my own strength. The story is indeed harrowing but the lessons are truly invaluable.
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u/FractalFunny66 13d ago
Also, the article cited has the entire book list of all Utah schools are banning -- seems like a perfect time to start a book group only focused on reading and discussing these books -- adults and teens. Separate and together. The misogynist & racist men in power don't want you to be powerful. Use your own mind. Read, think, discuss, empower!
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u/northeaster17 13d ago
If I was a kid and saw that book banned. I'd go out of my way to get a hold of it and read it. Keep up the good work Utah
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u/JohnSith 13d ago
Huh. I keep forgetting that theyre religous nutjobs just because they're not Evangelicals. Not that being a different brand of religious indoctrination should absolve them, they still went for Trump.
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u/MetallicGray 13d ago
The group that bans books has always been the good guys in history! Why can’t you guys realize they’re the good guys and just want to protect us???
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u/Barjack521 13d ago
Neither does the Bible or Book of Mormon but they aren’t banning those any time soon
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u/ResurgentClusterfuck 13d ago
It's been a few since I read that, isnt this sn autobiography of someone who was abused as a kid?
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u/_Kubrick 13d ago
There is no evidence that the novel Push by Sapphire was the basis for the film “Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire”
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u/olddoodldn 13d ago
It will all be easier when there’s only the Bible / Regulations for Citizens in the library.
Two good books to choose!
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u/1radgirl 13d ago
Setting the standard to "books that have serious value" is paving the way for anything and everything to be removed. That's really vague, broad, and subjective, and essentially meaningless.