Sapphire: February Portrait of the Month

Sapphire, 1988

Author and poet Sapphire was born Ramona Lofton in 1950 in Fort Ord, California. Her father was an army sergeant, and her mother was a member of the Women’s Army Corps. Lofton’s family, including three siblings, relocated several times during her childhood to various cities, states, and countries. When she was 13, her parents separated and her mother abandoned the family. Lofton eventually dropped out of high school and moved to San Francisco where she attained a GED. She attended the City College of San Francisco in the 1970s but did not graduate. In 1977, she moved to New York City, working several odd jobs. In the 1980s, she started to write poetry and performed readings at venues such as the Nuyorican Cafe during the height of the Slam Poetry movement. She joined the organization the United Lesbians of Color for Change. From 1983 to 1993, she lived in Harlem and taught reading and writing to teenagers and adults. Lofton took the name “Sapphire” because of the word’s one-time cultural association as a “belligerent black woman.” Sapphire self-published a collection of her poems, titled Meditations on the Rainbow in 1987. She enrolled at the City College of New York, graduated in 1993, and later earned an MFA from Brooklyn College. Her 1994 book of poetry, American Dreams, was published by Vintage to critical acclaim and public debate because of its harsh depictions of inner city life, particularly “Wild Thing,” told from the voice of a teenage rapist. Her first novel, Push, was published in 1996. It was met with both admiration and controversy for its graphic portrayal of an illiterate 16-year-old African-American girl growing up in a cycle of incest and abuse. Sapphire’s Black Wings and Blind Angels, a new volume of poetry, was published in 1999. In 2009, the film Precious, based on Sapphire’s novel Push, premiered at the Sundance and Cannes Film Festivals to critical praise. It was directed by Lee Daniels and starred Gabourey Sidibe, Mo’Nique, Paula Patton, and Mariah Carey and won two Academy Awards. Sapphire received a Fellow Award in Literature from United States Artists in 2009. Her second novel, The Kid, was published in 2011; its main character is the son of Precious Jones, Sapphire’s female protagonist in Push.