The narrator, a Black teenager named Claireece Precious Jones, explains that she should be in the 11th grade given her age (she is 16), but that she is in the ninth grade because she was held back twice. At seven, she repeated second grade because she couldn’t read and was urinating in her clothes. In 1983, she missed school for a year because her father had raped and impregnated her, and she had given birth to a baby with Down syndrome. Precious likes math class with Mr. Wicher, although she sits in the back and doesn’t participate. On the first day of class, Mr. Wicher singled her out for failing to open her book, and she cursed him out and humiliated him; she hadn’t enjoyed embarrassing him but had to deflect in order to hide the fact that she couldn’t read. Precious wants to learn and keeps hoping that something will click or that one of her teachers will help her catch up to her peers, but it hasn’t happened.

It is now 1987 and Precious is pregnant again. While she is on her way to math class, a white administrator named Mrs. Lichenstein stops her in the hall and pulls her into her office.