From USA TODAY:
Millions of readers and moviegoers have come to admire and love an unlikely heroine from Harlem: Claireece Precious Jones, who, at 16, is obese and illiterate. She has been beaten by her mother and raped and impregnated by her father, who infected her with HIV. But Precious survives. In spirit, she may even triumph over what has been done to her. She learns to read.
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