The Kid

book · Penguin Press · 2011

By Sapphire

Sourced from New York Times · Indexed 2026

Fifteen years after the publication of Push, Sapphire gives voice to Abdul Jones, the son of her unforgettable heroine, Precious. The Kid is an electrifying story of body and spirit, rooted in the hungers of flesh and of the soul, bringing us deep into the interior life of Abdul. We meet him at age nine, on the day of his mother's funeral. Left alone to navigate in a world where 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, the deep nourishing power of love, and of art, The Kid becomes a young man about to take flight. Intimate, terrifying and deeply alive, Abdul's journey bears witness to an artist's birth by fire.