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Sapphire Biography

American author and performance poet. Her first novel, "Push," published in 1996, brought Sapphire praise and much controversy for its graphic account of a young woman growing up in a cycle of incest and abuse. A film based on her novel premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2009. It was renamed "Precious." The cast included Gabourey Sidibe, MoNique (who won the Academy Award for her portrayal of Precious mother Mary), Mariah Carey, and Lenny Kravitz. Sapphire herself appears briefly in the film as a daycare worker. Like her character Precious, Sapphire herself was sexually abused, at the age of eight, by her own father, a US army sergeant. Link to Wikipedia biography Read less